I hate asking for help, but please read.

Bumping 4 vis

Baby on the way, mad bills to pay

who do you owe the $6K to? hospital? doctor? debt collection agency?

You should be doing this as a charity run in which you cheat.

uh uh wrote:

who do you owe the $6K to? hospital? doctor? debt collection agency?

We were originally on a payment plan with the hospital and a doctor individually. They were two years each. We were able to pay off the doctor's bill in that time but not the hospital. I paid part of it by 401k loan and have bounced the rest around various 0% balance transfer credit cards. In full disclosure, some of the debt is also the result of other expenses that came up while I wasn't working, such as a new boiler.

Health insurance, yes or no?

bleu wrote:

Health insurance, yes or no?

Had it then and have a mostly better plan now.

Are you underwater with a mortgage? $6000 five yrs ago is 60 months at a $100 a month. How can it not be paid off?

bleu wrote:

Are you underwater with a mortgage? $6000 five yrs ago is 60 months at a $100 a month. How can it not be paid off?

It's $6000 now, the original amount was about $33,000.

Thanks to everyone who is challenging this. I expect nothing else from letsrun than to make it even more humiliating than it already is.

So basically what you are saying is you have $6000 in credit card debt. If you had not transferred the medical portion to your card, then you might have more options for changing payment plans or defaulting. With it on a credit card, though, you'll pay through the roof if you get behind on payments or try to default. So your real cross to bear is how to pay off this credit card without huge interest piling up. And to anyone saying it's easy to just pay $100 more per month to pay off the debt, it will never look that way to a guy carrying $6k of combined expenses on a credit card he struggles to pay every month.

I can give you some credit advice. If you're opening new credit cards to transfer this balance, do NOT immediately close every credit card account once you are done with it. I know this sounds nuts, but let's say you've spent $6k of a $10k max for a card. You've spent 60% of your available credit as far as the credit agencies are concerned. Now let's say you move it to another $10k card and it's still just a $6k debt. Well now you have $20k available credit open and are only using $6k of what's available to you. So you went from using 60% (6k out of 10k) of your available credit to now just 30% (6k out of 20k). You obviously don't want dozens of open credit cards on your credit report, but you probably should not rush to close all your old accounts just because the balance is $0. This assumes no annual fee on these cards.

It may be taboo, but you might want to consider a baby shower where all you two ask for is cash. Paying off that credit card is pretty important. I also recommend you ask your parents if they are rich to help you pay it off.

I'm not sure GoFundMe is the right platform to use for this. Sure, it has name recognition. However you probably want a funding platform that gives you all of the proceeds without the requirement of hitting a goal.

I was a young dad (22) so I know what it’s like to be financially strapped with kids better than most. My wife had nothing more than a HS education and my starting income was 45k out of college at that age. Only this year does my wife have a college education so it makes sense for her to finally work full time.

Looking back, I am terrified for you. Not the debt, 6k is nothing. However, what bothers me is you both haven’t been able to pay it off after several years because money is too tight. Your real headache is when your baby is born. You may end up with debt from the birth but the ongoing childcare expenses are going to kill you. If your wife intends on working, then daycare will soak up 1500 a month easy that you haven’t had to pay in the past. If she doesn’t work, then your income will drop by 40% for years. Either way, if your marginally making it now, you are going to be drowning 12 months from now.

Only 10 years later am I finally starting to get ahead. I’m dead serious, I bootstrapped everything. I paid for my wedding and it cost only 2k. (Married at dads house, wife made her own dress and cake, friends made the food). We never did a honeymoon. We have never vacationed, EVER. I bought the smallest house in the best school district I could get. We now have 5 people in 1400 sq ft. I’ve been forced to do all my own work on the house including the roof and utilities. Take heed, plan on cutting drastically to avoid bankruptcy if you can.

I know there is a lot of BS on this boards, but everything I wrote is true. Congratulations! Your life is about to be fulfilled in a way you’ve never known. But you have never known what busy and poor is until 9 months from now.

You can often renegotiate medical debt with the people billing you for it. Send them a letter with what you are willing to pay and adjustments on your bill.

The hospital isn't going to break you over $6,000 if you have paid down from $33,000 (which you left out). You won't be denied care. I would speak to your financial advisor. I assume you have one or can be referred to someone through work. You make a good salary between the two of you and shouldn't be living in fear of going under. It's not a good idea to ask LR these types of questions as no one has the actual numbers but you.

jasmin wrote:

You can often renegotiate medical debt with the people billing you for it. Send them a letter with what you are willing to pay and adjustments on your bill.

Thanks for the advice. We did that and had an advocate negotiate on my behalf.

Thanks for the advice. I've actually been able to maintain pretty good credit through this by never missing a payment and opening an average of one new account per year while leaving the others open. It certainly helps that I had good credit going into this as well.

Making the payments wasn't really an issue. I've been paying about $500 a month for 4 years. My student loans will be paid off in September of this year and the credit card debt would be paid off early next year. I have a small savings that was for another medical emergency or whatever life may have thrown our way. We never really saved with having a child in mind because we weren't supposed to be able to have one.

bleu wrote:

The hospital isn't going to break you over $6,000 if you have paid down from $33,000 (which you left out). You won't be denied care. I would speak to your financial advisor. I assume you have one or can be referred to someone through work. You make a good salary between the two of you and shouldn't be living in fear of going under. It's not a good idea to ask LR these types of questions as no one has the actual numbers but you.

I don't mean to be snide because I know you're trying to help, but if you read the original post and my responses you'll see that I don't owe the money to the hospital and that I have $6000 left, not $6000 in original debt.

I realize that life is hard and that many people have it worse. However we were told to expect my wife to not be able to work for a few months before the baby is due because of a risk of preclampsia. We just don't have that kind of savings.

This is a different take... how long have you been an engineer? $60K is starting for most out of school easily. You may be underpaid to be honest.

Thanks for writing that.

I don't feel like we're marginally making it. Up until a few days ago I felt pretty secure. We have a decent savings for emergencies (which I learned the importance of when I couldn't work for three months). We both contribute to our 401k and we're both close to paying off our student loans. I know it could be worse, and maybe I'm making a big deal about something that every family goes through. I just don't see a way to keep paying everything once she stops working.

My last resort is to sell the house or take out another mortgage, but neither of those things are great plans for obvious reasons.

Jeremy R wrote:

This is a different take... how long have you been an engineer? $60K is starting for most out of school easily. You may be underpaid to be honest.

I'm certainly underpaid, but I work for the state, not a private firm. With enough service I get a decent pension and the other benefits are really good.