#127 - Pay Off Debt vs Get A Month Ahead: Which Should You Do First?
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What question are Ben and Ernie tackling about debt and getting a month ahead?
I'm Ben. And I'm Ernie. And you're listening to Budget Nerds.
You are not alone. No, you are not. Friends, welcome back to another episode. Today, Ben and I are discussing debt. versus month ahead. What's the priority? What do you do first? Do you focus on paying off your debt or do you focus on getting that month ahead? So we're gonna go through the pros and cons and give our opinions at the end. But before we dive into that, Ben, what's going on with your van? It's been a number of weeks. And so I want to know, I also know our community, they're totally wrapped in to this story.
Nothing really new to share, to be honest. I mean, we're just plucking away, setting money aside for it. I talked to Caitlin about it. I was like, so like, how are you feeling now? Like, do you want to... Like, do you want to, like, get the new van? Because, like, when I pitched it to her, it was like, we kind of landed on, like, oh, we'll set it aside and then, like, decide later, you know, whether we're going to fix it or get a new one. And I think we're headed more toward new van. But Caitlin is very annoyed about it because she doesn't care about cars at all. And so she's like, ugh, fine. And I'm kind of getting a little excited about it. So I don't know. We'll see. But I don't really care about cars either.
But I do care about... not having a van that is going to break down because my mechanic was like i keep thinking about this mechanic is like you know you might want to just like not take it out of the city like like out of town and i'm like well then what good is it you know what i mean i mean it's still good but how is the performance how far do you want to be away from home if it breaks down uh it's doing fine okay um you know it's falling apart like trim is like ripping everywhere and you know it's it's it's ugly and i yeah i i brought it to uh the tire place because i have to bring it to the tire place like constantly and the guy was like he's like you know you could go over to auto zone and get some new rims because like there's like the rims are like like two of them have fallen off and he's like the other rims are like gonna you're not rims not the rims like the little thing on that goes on there what's it called the plate the something oh that you can take the like a cover oh
What's it called? I'm not a car person.
Oh, hubcap.
It's like, this is about to fall off. And I'm like, I don't even care about this van enough to buy a $10 plastic hubcap. So, you know. Anyways. You know, it's fine. It's running. It's just... yeah okay i should call the mechanic again and be like would i because that's my thing is i'm like okay if i keep this for six months like is it a situation where it's like some of these things need to be fixed within the next six months or can i like run it right until then you know but we'll see
All right, so no major developments.
I guess that's what... No, nothing new. Maybe I was hoping for... We got a bonus at work. We got a profit share with YNAB. All of it went to the van. So that was a good chunk, but just still plucking away. So there you go.
All right, well, I'll keep asking you, and we'll keep the folks up to date because they want to know. They want to know. All right. Month ahead... No, debt versus month ahead. Actually, it doesn't matter the order, but for some reason in my mind, it's debt versus month ahead. Why are we doing this topic? So this was probably... Well, this was over two years ago. I think it was May of 2023. We did an episode on emergency fund versus month ahead. And that one was wildly popular.
I think it's still our most popular one, right? Or is there one that got, did it get eked out by something else? I feel like.
Actually, I don't know where the final numbers are at, but it is top. it is one of the top ones. And also, it sparked probably the most comments because people had an opinion on what's the priority, the emergency fund or the month ahead. And then some other people were asking us on, well, what about debt versus a month ahead? And I think we maybe mentioned that in passing in some episodes, but I wanted to do a full episode.
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3 chaptersSpeakers
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