Out of the Blue

I just logged on to my ML account to see if my new statement had been generated. Even though today was payday, I wanted to wait till my minimum payment was generated so that I wouldn't have to pay twice a month.
Imagine my confusion when I saw that my minimum payment had increased from $65 to $95. I did some investigation and I saw that for some reason I was taken of my 1.9% APR and put on the regular 9.99%. I am pretty sure that my promotional rate was for the life of the balance. Seems like I am going to be on the phone with Merrill Lynch tomorrow. What a fun saturday to look forward to!

Payday!

Today is payday.
Time to pay some bills yay!

I'm still here

I've been working on getting myself together.
I just updated my sidebars and unfortunately, it seems as though I have taken $1000 backwards in my credit cards. It's been a combination of turning a year older and some unexpected travelling and some plane old indulging. I seemed to have forgotten how $50 here and $30 there adds up really quickly. Especially when you stop keeping track.

Capital one card is officially closed. This means it has no choice but to go down down down. I guess, thinking about it, them forcing me to close my card was a blessing in disguise. I think I should probably just take my other card out of my wallet. When I don't see my cards, I don't think about them that much.

I would say that when I started this blog, I was a bit naive in thinking I would just watch my debt go down. I thought I had learned from everyone else's mistakes. That's not the case as my $1000 increase has shown but I still know that I have learned a lot and my debt will eventually hit 0.

For those that have suggested that I should concentrate on my debt before and e-fund, thanks for the suggestion. I am sticking with building my efund though. The $500 that i put towards it last month instead of paying my student loans has already helped a lot. There were some expenses that I might have had to charge that this will come in handy for. For instance, I didn't realize my plate tags were expired. It's only $41 but I didn't have it in my regular checking and as I didn't want to get a ticket, I needed to renew it. It's the type of thing I might have charged and then not paid off immediately because it's "only" $41.

Don't worry, I didn't just decide to let my student loans lapse. I just happen to be ahead of schedule on both (next due date for one is in 2010). I'm only diverting those funds for 2 more months though because the interest keeps accruing and even at 2.87%, that's still a lot of money. It's a price I am willing to pay in order to have the security that if I ever lose my job for whatever reason, I have enough money to pay at least one month's rent. I didn't have that before and it was scary.

I found this great website via dogatemyfinances, it's called smartpassiveincome and the author has some great ideas on how to make money on the side. He has a great post on ehow that I'll link to later but I just wanted to say that, I wrote an article in 2 minutes and it's already making money (little = $.22) in one day. I will probably post about this another time because this post is long already but you should definitely check him out. He's a great writer.

Changing my focus

I just thought I would let you know that I will be switching gears for the next couple of months. So many things have cropped up that it has shown me that a sizable Efund needs to be set in place. In the last week I have learned that I might have to buy 2 more plane tickets. Granted, not as much as the 650 pound one but it's money not in my budget nonetheless. My grandma is sick and alone in a hospital so I feel it would be good to go see her sometime in this month or next month. Other things have come up and basically I have decided I am just going to pay a little over the minimum on my cards until my savings account has $1500. I am going to skip my loan payments for a month or 2 because they are pre-paid till next year. As soon as I tweak my budget i'll let you guys know what i'll be putting towards savings. It should only take about 2 months or so to get it there and then i'll shift focus back on paying my debt. I just don't want to charge anything else on my card.

Things seem funky at my job and I'm not sure how much longer i'll have this job so I need to make sure I have something to fall back on. Hmm, maybe my goal should be 1675 b/c that would be 1 months rent. We'll see. How much do you debt payers have sitting in your efund?

I made one sale on half.com but that's it. From talking to my friends it seems that the website is best for selling textbooks and new releases. Do you have any suggestions as to where I could sell regular novels? Also, has anyone ever used the auction feature of ebay? I have a brand new prada bag I want to sell.

Can't wait for summer