Submitted by [deleted] t3_yhmg7o in personalfinance
[deleted]
Submitted by [deleted] t3_yhmg7o in personalfinance
[deleted]
Are you taking cash out and taking 1 fee or having each payment have it's own fee?
Step 1 is making a budget with eliminating all possible extra expenses and minimizing everything else you can.
Each payment has its own $30 fee. We also take a couple hundred out to buy groceries when needed. If we didn't have to deal with all the fees that we get, we would be able to have that money without having to use overdraft
You need to just take the hit once, take out what you can and pay bills that way.
Take out 500$ cash even if it's an overdraft, pay the 30 on that, then pay 5 100$ bills and cost is 530$. If you pay essentially 130 per bill, now that's 650 you are paying. You must stop paying each bill on its own fee. Get a side job doing door dash just to get you to safely above.
What's your budget?
What's your income?
Good budgeting is the main way to resolve the issue long-term. Set a financial goal and make a budget that you agree on to get you there. In the short term, you could agree to have one month of "zero extras" and budget meal prep for all meals to get the ball rolling. There are subs for meal prep, frugal, no spend, and budget eating that have fantastic tips.
Unfortunately, it's as easy (and hard) as spend less and make more. List out your expenses and where your money goes. See what can be reduced or removed. Even reducing your grocery bills temporarily.
A common " second job" is selling plasma. The places around here are at almost $1000 the first month.
Can you move back in with one of your families for a while until you get caught up financially and establish some savings? I’m worried that an emergency could makes the situation worse and that you might start to incur credit card debt.
The number one thing you need to do is to create a proper budget and stick to it. You shouldn't just be spending money in the account down to 0 each month. Leave a buffer in the account that you treat as $0. For example, when the account balance is $100 that's it.
After you get some margin, you can work on breaking the paycheck to paycheck cycle, building an emergency fund, and so on. But first you need to start properly budgeting and only spending based on the budget to break the overdraft cycle.
You need to stop all of your automatic payments immediately and only make those payments when the money is there. If the problem is that you have more bills than you have money then what you need to do is get second jobs
Just stop it, get a part time job, sell plasma or go hungry and eat nothing but ramen but break cycle, no more excuses, what would you do without overdrafts? Go do that
[removed]
micha8st t1_iuekooa wrote
There's really no magic here. You need to either cut your spending, or you need to bring in more income, or both.
Next time you go shopping, buy the store-brand ketchup instead of Heinz. Make coffee at home instead of stopping at Starbucks.
See if you can work a few extra hours.