Krista

joey is with us joey is in cincinnati hi joey how are you i'm doing well how are you both doing better than we deserve what's up in your world well i've had a very um stressful past week i found out that i was pregnant um with my second child and my partner was just not ready to take on that responsibility so he left um The good news is, is that I don't really have much debt.

I just have a car payment. Um, and now I'm just confused on where to go from here. I started out with your debt snowball. And since I only have one thing, I was ready to, you know, attack it, pay 1600 a month extra and wipe it out by the end of this year. But now since the baby's coming, um, I don't know what to do. Do I still do that? Do I save for the baby? What do I do at this point?

I'm just so confused.

So I feel like I'm too old to be having these problems.

Yeah.

Yes.

Well, yes, one and then one baking in the oven.

After taxes with no side hustles, it's $4,500 a month that I take home by myself.

Yes.

Definitely. I can definitely do that.

With the side hustle, I think maybe like $2,800. Okay. I'm going to call it $3,000 for five months. That's $15,000. Yeah. And then it slows down to maybe $1,000 a month as you reach towards the delivery date.

Yes.

Well, he asked me how much money I want.

To be honest, all of my emotions, because this has been so shocking, because I had an IUD, so I wasn't planning for this. All of my emotions have just been spent on surviving and not dealing with it.

It does. It definitely does. And how much? I don't want to make an agreement.

I have a church that I started going to, and I also have an international students group that I volunteer at. And while they're like little kids, they feel like family to me.

I know.

Yeah. So I have 14,000. Perfect. Okay. That's great. Yeah. Cause to the number, like a big lump sum. No, no, no, no, no, no.

I know, but that was two months ago.

Okay. Thank you both.

Okay. We got you. Have a great day.

Okay.

Oh, my gosh. Hi.

So I was calling because I have some questions about how to combine my finances with my fiancé. We're getting married in 12 days. Yay! Yay! I know you guys really preach, you know, combining your assets and finances, and I really want to do that. Unfortunately, my fiancé is really just...

kind of crushed by student debt, and he recently had a loan go to collections last week, and so that kind of turned our world upside down, and now I'm not sure how to move forward with combining our assets. How much student loan debt does he have? Oh, he has around $80,000.

He makes $22 an hour. Why? Why? So he's a physical therapist assistant, and he went to a private university out of state. So he really just collected quite a bit during that time. And the loan that went to collections was $10,000.

Yes. He actually just did an application yesterday. He's moving on to a different job and has a lot of work to do.

Yes.

He has his PTA.

Yeah.

No, he makes an average of about, after taxes, he makes about $42,000 a year.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I know. And, I mean, we've moved on from that. He's looking at new jobs with great prospects. We're excited about that. That's good.

Yeah. So the first year, he'll be making around $26 an hour. But after the first year, he'll bump up to about $39 an hour. Okay. What do you make? I'm self-employed, so I make my monthly amount kind of ranges every month, but I average about $4,000 to $5,000 a month.

After everything, it really kind of drops down to about $38,000 a month.

I, this is my second year in business.

Yes.

Absolutely.

So that's kind of what I'm asking advice-wise. I really want to set up our first year of marriage for success. You know, I really want to tackle this debt. Unfortunately, for this to make sense, I kind of have to give you a really quick backstory about our past year and why we're in this situation.

I live in Swannanoa, North Carolina, and I live in one of the neighborhoods that was completely wiped out in the flood. Our home is still standing, but it needs some repairs, and Shortly after that, about three months later, we had both of our cars' converters stolen out of them, rendering us with no cars to get to and from work. So I had to take out two additional owned cars.

It's illegal for a California Emissions Prius to have an aftermarket part in, so insurance drove them off as total losses, gave us $800 and said sorry. And obviously $800 is not enough money to buy a car.

Right, which they deemed at $800.

I agree.

I know.

Yes, and our house is not gutted. It's still standing, and it's completely paid off. Are you living in it? Yes.

It does have some damage. It needs a new roof on our house. Our property, it has our house and it has my trailer in the backyard, which is where I hold all my inventory for my business. And it needs a new roof because things are leaking all over my merchandise.

Which is going to cost around $8,000. Okay. So honestly, I'm trying to figure out what do I tackle first? Do I pay off these car loans first? the trailer roof or do I immediately start tackling?

I have a storefront and I have, um, business online, but one of my stores got completely wiped out in the flood as well.

Storefront.

Okay.

How much do you guys have on the cars? I have a $12,000 loan on my car, and he has a $7,000 loan on his car.

Yeah, I appealed it, and I reported it to the state agency. Unfortunately, my claim was just kind of denied. So I was given a final offer of $800 again, and they said that was the best thing to do.

No, it's a local company based in Asheville.