I met up last night with the only guy who went on the mission trip with us. We talked about the remaining balance left for the group to pay and how long it will take to pay off and so on.
My impression is that the group as a whole doesn't care that much about paying it off. If they did they would be working harder to come up with fundraising strategies and so on. Then again, I've lost steam in coming up with ideas too.
Although to be perfectly fair, at least 4 out of the 7 are under/un employed. I can understand how that would make it harder for them to contribute.
I had kicked around in my head a few ways to boost what I'm already pitching in just so we can get it paid off sooner and I think I've finally settled on one that won't hinder my debt reduction much.
I will continue to budget/pay $50/month from my check on the 20th.
I will continue with my Three Phase Plan, applying money in accordance with how that is mapped out.
Once Phase Two is complete I will monitor my savings account balances and each month the total balance is $1100 or more I will withdraw anything over $1000 to keep the balance maintained at $1000. I already have budget amounts in place to contribute to savings and would like to continue those as habit that way should the need arise that I have to pull from it, the balance will be restored in due time.
Whatever I pull from savings will also be given to the credit card balance as an extra payment that month. The hope being that it will wind up taking less than 3 years to pay off.
It'll be a couple of months before that will be implemented since I'm only about halfway to my mark. And I have a couple things this year that I know will be coming out of savings. But it makes me feel better knowing I have a plan in place.
It'll be interesting to see how the group reacts to the numbers we show them when we finally get together and discuss it again. The guy I talked to will be calling each person individually to get answers to specific questions that way he can present information to the group as far as concensus goes so our meeting will be more structured.
I'm also excited to help him with mapping stuff out, ie if we want to pay it off in a year each person HAS to contribute $X each month or it's not going to happen.
I must say I'm really torn on this whole thing. I feel an obligation to pay it off on the one hand, yet on the other I feel that what's left is no longer my responsibility since I've pretty much paid my share. I feel an obligation to put as much money towards it as possible, yet am in the middle of my own debt reduction goals and don't know where to draw the line exactly. I'm finally no longer robbing Peter to pay Paul and I'd like to keep it that way.
(For those of you new to my blog, I went on a mission trip to Croatia in May/June of '06. Because of the World Cup, ticket prices doubled before we could lock in a price and wound up raising only half of the money we needed to pay for our airfare. The tickets had already been purchased by a third party on our behalf, whether or not we went we were still responsible for paying for them so we decided to go anyway. One of my teammates put the balance [$8600] on a then empty credit card. Since we've returned we've managed to get it down to $5500 due to money that came in for the trip after we returned. We've pretty much just been making the minimum payments since then. Through my coaching, the gal with the card has taken steps to decrease the interest. First she called and asked them to lower it, got it down from 19% to 16%. Then she found a balance transfer offer to get it down to 7.99% so that's where it's sitting now.)
Decision made...
January 4th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
January 4th, 2007 at 10:16 pm 1167949018
As far as the others being under/unemployed. Well, they made the commitment to pay the money back. It shouldn't be your responsibility just because you make more money. DH and I have never made a large income but we have ALWAYS paid our own debts. As a Christian, I think anything less than paying your debts is a sin. That's harsh, but that's the way it is,IMO!
January 5th, 2007 at 12:21 am 1167956476
January 5th, 2007 at 12:29 am 1167956956
On the one hand, you've done your share. On the other hand, someone is getting stuck with a great big bill. While you have done _your_ share, she's stuck doing everyone else's share.
Is everyone's situation so bad that they are not able to do balance transfers to move their portion of the debt to their own cards?
There's definitely a valuable lesson to be learned here.
January 5th, 2007 at 01:16 am 1167959773
That is an idea I hadn't thought of. Moving from one person's card to anothers. I don't know why I didn't think of it. I know my credit cards let me get balance transfer checks made out to me, sort of like a cash advance but with a way better interest rate. I'm going to bring that up as an option. I really really like that one. Would take the burden off of her and place it on everyone. There's only one person that wouldn't work for, she's in the middle of going through a bankruptcy but....