My CC debt is under 40k!

All my payments hit today and I updated my progress bars. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my total credit card debt is under 40K. It sounds like progress. My graduate loans are in the negative because they accrue interest everyday (i post the payoff amount) and I have not paid on them since I started this blog. I'll make a payment on the 30th though so I'm not to bothered about that. Both my student loans are ahead of schedule in payment.

It seems like my commentors have dropped off. Maybe my posts are not stimulating enough. I guess it's not a very big deal. This is as much for me as for my readers. If there is something you'd like to have me blog about, let me know. I know some people like Jim at mydebtblog have stopped blogging but hey, google tells me that there are people reading so feel free to comment.

It seems like a lot of people are struggling with balancing debt and living life. Debtkid has an article that talks about it. What do you guys do? Do you stop everything so that you can focus on paying your debts? No new clothes, no going out, no vacations etc? Or do you still treat yourself?
I think I fall in the middle. I haven' t bought any new clothes because I feel very guilty to spend that much on a sweater when I owe almost 100k. I will be just fine in the clothes I have already. I'm not going to get arrested for wearing the same coat everyday or not looking like a fashion plate. I haven't taken an vacation that I had to pay for but I will be going to my cousins wedding in the UK bcoz... it's my cousin. That's one thing I won't allow debt to make me miss. I might have to put something on my credit card because I don't have enough saved up for a ticket but I will be sensible about it.

I have kind of stopped going out unless I can get in for free and I definitely don't spend money on drinks (hey, it improves your flirting skills). I do pay myself an allowance ($10 a week) to spend on whatever I want without restrictions. That's my way of keeping sane. I don't know, it's worked so far for me and I've stayed on budget. How about you guys? where do you draw the line?

It's Payday!

This means I can pay some bills! Yay! I no longer have $5 in my checking account. The only problem is that it won't last for long. Right now payday means money in, money out. I'm okay with that though because it means my debt is decreasing.
Unfortunately, something I didn't take into consideration when I did all those balance transfers is that my minimum payments are higher on those accounts. It would have been okay if the minimum on the account I transferred from decreased but because it is a line of credit the payments are fixed. I had to adjust my budget because I didn't have enough in the credit card category to pay even the minimums on all my credit cards. The end result is that I am on a very tight budget. There is no room to go more than $2 in any category so that will be tough.

The other thing that is a bit disappointing is that the increased minimum payments means that I can afford to pay only the minimum on the 2 cards (cap 1 & USbank). I haven't done this in years. I always pay at least $50 more than the minimum. Since my payments are going to be fixed, this will change as the months pass by.

I looked at my budget for the year and realized that my BOA Line of credit will be paid of by the end of the year. Sooner if I get a big refund. That makes me so happy. I know I didn't completely pay it off because I transferred about 10K to other cards but I'm still excited. It had the worst APR's ever.

I figure once that is paid off then I'll have some breathing room. I pay about $450 a month on that account and it will be great to have that paid off. I'm going to use a modified snowball approach. I am not going to put the entire thing towards my other cards. I will use some for debt, some for increased saving and some just to sit in my checking so I have a little cushion.

There is something at the back of my mind that I feel is going to bite me in the you-know-what soon. I have not received a gas bill since I moved in in October. I called national grid early December and they said that they could not get into the building the first time and someone would be along to read the meter in a couple of days. I asked if I could schedule a time for them to come when I knew I would be in and they said no. I don't want to get a $900 bill some months from now and have them tell me it's due in 15 days. I have never used gas before and so I have not idea what my consumption is every month. If anyone has any ideas or advice please let me know.

I know a lot of people got paid today so my question is - "What did you do with your paycheck?"

Best Buy Coupon

Last post I swear.
If anyone needs $10 off on bestbuy.com let me know. i have a coupon that expires on the 24th and I'm not going to use it. Shoot me an email and I'll give you the code. Please let it be for something you were going to buy before you read this post :)

Balance Transfer games

I must not have much to do at work today.

So I realized after updating my finance charges for the month of January that this BOA line of credit is ridiculous. I paid $250.24 in finance charges for Jan. That's about half of what I pay on the card monthly! This whole 4 steps forward, 2 steps back does not sit well with me.

So I moved the balance.

I moved $6000 to my Usbank card and it will be at 9.4%. It cost me $180 in fees but I think it's worth it. I don't plan on paying off my debt in 6 months so I will "make up" the fee in the difference in charges. My problem is I don't know what to do about my debt meter. I don't want to change the numbers because they represent where I "started". Yeah, I am anal about silly details like that.

I think maybe I'll just have the USbank be in negative (which will be depressing) till I get it to where it was originally. Good news is, I was playing around on turbo tax and it looks like I will be getting a really big refund. I had $1000 that's in my budget already so anything over that will go to my debt! Can't wait till I get official numbers (where are my w2's?). Anyone else excited about doing taxes?

Anyway, what do you guys think about the new font and color? I thought the black was hard to read and the text was kind of small.

A series of Unfortunate events

aka how to spend >$120 @ target.

You can sort of tell where this is going right? This weekend was not so good in the finance department. I told you all about my master plan to save money on household items. I got a $120 gift card FREE that I was to use to cover 3-4 months worth of household expenses. Well, that didn't work out quite as planned. I went to target on Saturday and I spent, ta-da, $134.44.

Yes, you read right. I spent more than the entire gift card in one trip. Did I buy a vacuum cleaner? No. A microwave? No. Foreman grill...any appliance? Nope, nope, NO!

So what the heck did I spend all that money on. I'm going to list it out for you guys. I'll add a special notation on the things I have NEVER bought before.

Cleaning supplies (what, you thought you were going to see makeup and beauty products?)
Scrub sponge (6pack) - 5.99
scrubbing bubbles - 4.59
clorox toilet (2pack) - 3.69
method granite cloth (1st time purchase) - 4.19
scrubbing bubbles - 3.19
formula 409 - 2.69
tide detergent - 14.69

Health/Beauty
toothpaste - 4.49
toothbrush (4pack) - 7.34

Home
Containers
6cup - 3.99
4cup - 3.99
12cup (2)- 13.98
5cup - 4.49
5cup - 3.69
1cup (2) - 2.99
toilet paper - 15

Specialty
Summers eve powder (1st time purchase) - 2.89
playtex (2 boxes) - 16.08
kotex - 6.09

That's it. Anything super special? No. Somehow, I had the gall to be shocked when the lady was ringing up the purchases... I thought my bill would be slightly over $40. Um...hello? Toilet paper alone was $15! Yea, I obviously was not thinking. I think what happened is instead of buying for one month, I saw things like a 4pack of toothbrushes and thought, "hey, that's a great deal!" and I tossed it in my cart. The upside is I don't think I will need to go to target for a while. I don't know if I can last 3-4 months but I definitely will not be going in February. The downside is that I had to whip out my credit card to pay the $14.44 difference. Why? Because I only had about $5 in my checking account. Smart move? No.

I didn't really need ALL of those food containers - I could have put one back. I don't think I had to have bought 2 boxes of tampons either. Oh well, I've decided that once I get paid, the $14.44 is going to come out of my household budget for January. So it won't be $0 like I hoped but it'll still be less than $40.

The title says a series of unfortunate events, so you know there has to be at least one other thing I did wrong. All you astute readers would be right! I was really bored Sunday, being that I don't know that many people in the city yet. I def. have cravings when I'm bored so around 4pm I decided I wanted cake ... and ice-cream. This is despite the fact that I have $1 in my wallet and about $5 in my checking account. Paying down debt was not in my mind. Haagen Dazs and Sara Lee were though.

I went to the rite-aid near my house.
No sara Lee cake.
Should have gone back home.
Nope, I walked further to the Duane Reade.
No Sara Lee Cake and no ice-cream
Should have gone back home.
Un-huh, I walked further to the grocery store.
Searched and searched for Sara Lee.
Couldn't find it.
Should have gone back home.
No way, after all this effort? It's a grocery store, there HAS to be Sara Lee cake somewhere.
Find it in a remote corner of the store. On to ice-cream.
Hmm, ice-cream here is much too expensive (suddenly cost is important?)
Decide to just buy the cake*
walk back to Rite-aid and buy ice-cream there.
Put it all on credit.

What is wrong with me? Then i get annoyed that I ate the ice-cream and cake b/c I went to the gym all week. Wow, putting this in words is allowing me to view myself from a distance. Anyway, this is going to come out of my budget when I get paid, so I am essentially using my "pocket money" on stupid ish!

I vow to be better. I need to make significant progress in this debt battle.


* At the grocery store, I actually picked up some waffles, some syrup and other groceries to buy, before a little voice of reasoning told me how dumb I was being. I was thinking that since I was going to use the CC to pay for the cake, what would an extra $10 count? This was the thinking that landed me in trouble and I hope you guys just stay away from that temptation. Every dollar counts. Using the CC @ target was what made me think to use it again for the desserts. It's almost like the pringles ad - once you start, you can't stop.