Plastic Pinch Update for October
Not a whole lot of excitement here. I don’t feel like I’m doing much to actually pay down my debt. The focus is to transfer at least one if not both of my smaller balances to my 0% card for 12 months and then get the principle paid down quickly. The plan is to just lump the payments all together and pay it consistently every month for 12 months. If everything goes as planned those smaller debts will be gone in a year if not quicker. I got to get the small stuff out of the way so I can put more energy into the larger ones. It will be nice to be working on getting BoA out of my life forever. Here’s my progress this month:
| Credit Cards | Balance | Credit Line | APR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America | $3,988.70 | $5,500.00 | 15.24% |
| Associates | $1,271.89 | $1,700.00 | 18.99% |
| Citi Dividend | $5,322.82 | $8,700.00 | 9.90% |
| Zales | $909.28 | $5,000.00 | 9.90% |
| Totals: | $11,492.69 | $20,900.00 | |
| Debt-to-Credit | 54.99% | Change | 0.72% |
I know it’s not very exciting. At least we gain an hour this coming Sunday and I like the cooler months of the year. The car insurance bill will soon be on its way, and then of course dealing with the cost of Christmas. For now I am going to hold off on disclosing what I’m getting my wife. I really don’t need any extra attention or comments on that. We’ll see where things stand with the balance transfer this coming month.
You do need a thick skin to blog about your finances! All your readers and commenters can sit here and pass judgement on your choices and decisions, but we’re not the ones living your life. You keep doing the best you can and stay focused that your goal is to be debt free and it will eventually be accomplished. You didn’t get into debt overnight, you won’t be debt free all at once, either. Keep plugging away at and start posting more!!!
That’s just my own personal plea. I enjoy reading your blog.
The easiest way to pay off CC debt is not have to pay interest. If you start looking at how much interest you pay every month, you’ll want to get all of your debt at 0%!
I agree that the interest slows down getting out of debt. I try to get the APR down to as close to 0% as possible can save a lot of money every year. When I add up what I pay in interest it is sad that if I didn’t have to pay any interest I could be debt free very quickly. I don’t want to open up a ton of 0% cards to transfer my balances around because I want to apply focused energy on one at a time. As the debt continues to come down, hopefully more rapidly as the smaller stuff is paid off, it will continue to get easier to get rid of credit card debt once and for all.
Then it’s the student loans.
I have been in debt and debt free and I can say with total conviction that there is nothing better than being totally without debt. I have a theory that people (especially Americans) spend too much money to have more stuff than they can competently care for. In the end, the stuff owns you instead of the reverse. To read more about this, and to learn a new way to live, check out my website at:
www.livingadventurously.com