My Debt Blog

Don’t be misled by the title, I am current on all my credit card accounts. I also encourage paying beyond the minimum payment on credit cards, of course focusing more effort on the one you want to rid your life of faster. Last night I was crunching the numbers on some of my cards and noticed differences in the balances based on the day I made a payment to the account. This gave me an idea on how to save a little extra each month.

If you carry a balance on a credit card, you’re going to pay interest at the APR of that card. When you make a payment before or on the due date, the balance on the card is less than it was before you made the payment. I usually just make payments at regular points in the month because that’s the system that I structured. This usually means I make a payment to an account a little before the actual due date. I realized I have been focusing on the wrong date.

Every time a bill is generated with all of the previous month’s details, it has a billing date, minimum payment amount, and a due date. Instead of focusing on making sure I make a payment before that due date, I should be making a payment on the billing date to lower that balance as soon as the bill is generated. This would save about 30 days of interest every month. Although it is not much of a difference it would add up in the long run.

So I’m calling all my credit card companies and trying to get some dates shifted around for me so that the billing date is at the date I make payments to the accounts. This will also take some careful planning because I’ll probably have to make two payments within one month in order to pull this off and stay in front of them.

I’m still working on the 0% balance transfer card and thinking about transferring balances from two cards over to that, so I can pay both off at once at 0% interest in 12 months. I’m going to probably transfer $1800 even so that 12 payments of $150 will eliminate that debt once and for all. Transferring credit card debt does not pay it off, it just moves to a place that makes it easier to pay it faster. Hopefully I will have an update on how this is going at the end of the month.

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I’m not sure if it is Wells Fargo’s fault or not, could be trusted USPS, but a payment didn’t make it to the bank. I got a letter this weekend that things are behind so I called them up to take care of it. The collections department isn’t very nice either, but I wasn’t expecting them to be friendly since I appear like a deadbeat to them.

Needless to say I’m fronting some fees that I hope I can get waived since every payment prior to this has posted just fine. There is a concern now that a regular bill payment mailed USPS is not going to make it to the destination. Now more than ever am I wanting to pay everything electronically so I can rest assured my payment is there.

Since I paid it electronically today it will take a few days before my account is brought back current. Unlike issues with credit cards, this one is way more serious and I should of stay on top of these checks not clearing. Can’t always trust the mail these days I guess.

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I have been pretty upset with my wife since last night. She is going to be student teaching soon and has some time off until the school year starts. This week she has gone out shopping for clothes and setting things up for school every day. Our ‘budget’ has some room for her to be able to spend some money on clothes, but what happens when it’s gone? That is where the fighting started.

She came home with a few more bags then I had expected. At first I brushed it off because I just didn’t want to know what she spent on all this stuff. Later that night she modeled the various things she bought and I tried to keep my cool. Then the ultimate question came up: how much did all this cost? She told me not to worry about it which confused me at first, then she told me she opened a new credit card and charged about $250 on it. It feels every effort I make to pay off debt is shifted into a new debt.

This is when it got interesting because she told me that when she is done with student teaching and gets her job, she wants her own checking account to handle her money. I told her it is a good thing I’m not that selfish with my income in that I consider it both of ours since it pays the mortgage, bills, and general cost of living. It’s not like this stuff is invisible either because I show her the exact amounts of what all this stuff costs and the extra at the bottom is the only wiggle room we have. Its not that we don’t have enough money, there’s just not enough extra for her anymore.

It always seems like a simple solution is when there isn’t enough money for lifestyle, instead of cutting lifestyle for a period of time, try to make more money so the standard of living doesn’t change. We are effectively going nowhere quickly because any progress is balanced out by overspending. I’m also being compared to our friend who is in the banking industry and recently was promoted to a VP at the age of 25 (same age as me) and got a huge pay increase from his already large salary, which I’m not sure what to think about that. My wife wants me to keep pushing for promotions and pay increases and my response is always the same, it all takes time. It is starting to depress me when I’m trying so hard to make our lives better and she only sees success as job title and salary. She still doesn’t know for sure if teaching is what she wants to do for a career. I don’t know what to do anymore but things are really ugly right now.

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We’re almost through this month of August and I think the money is going to get tight. Pretty much what my wife made for the summer has also been used as regular income. She is going into student teaching now and they (her teachers, advisors, etc) suggest that she not try to work while doing this. It is going to be almost like an unpaid internship where the gain is learning experience. I’m a little bit frustrated because we were having problems before, but now we’re going to have some serious problems if the spending isn’t controlled next month.

Priorities need to really be taken into consideration next month and the months that follow. I have that 1k sitting in an EF for emergencies, not for other things. There are two tires on my car I’m not sure how long they will last but will need to be replaced here soon. I am trying to plan $100 a tire for this month and next month so there will be some money there to fix that situation. What is going to be difficult next month until November or December is not running to the EF to fix a problem.

The other solution is for me to work more to make up for what my wife used to bring in. I can get a second job in my sleep, but the reason for a second job must be justified first. In the meantime I am going to resort to a pastime of doing website design/maintenance services that I did in high school and college. These jobs are small and random as I find them on Craigslist and knock them out quickly because I know what I’m doing.

I don’t think there’s going to be much in the terms of debt repayment for the next few months other than just holding the ship steady. The only positive thing right now is my wife is in her final stage for her masters degree. After that it means no more borrowing money for school through student loans. We could finally put an end to both of us using credit cards for any reason. I hope she lands a job quickly when she is done so that the household income bumps way up over what it has always been. My income has gone up over the two year period I have worked and expect it to increase even more. This time next year we should be on a better path to really focus on getting rid of debt.

My plastic pinch update will be coming shortly.

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I didn’t have much to post last week after the crazy $300 weekend that spawned a ton of comments from my readers. This weekend wasn’t that bad except for Saturday. Our cat decided to jump on a table and chew on my wife’s iPod. Now my wife is extremely picky about wear and tear and needs everything new looking all the time, so this was not good. I got her this thing for Christmas like 2 years ago and now it is no good because the cat chewed a button on it?

We went down to the mall (HATE HATE MALLS!) to the Apple store to their GeniousBar (yeah, and they use Macs, right) to see what could be done. They told us it could be replaced for $99 but he suggested the little wear and tear to this unit, it might be better to eBay it and buy a new one. She likes hers because it’s original and looks to me for the answer regarding spending $99 to replace this thing. I was annoyed that the decision has to end up in my hands, but I told her that we really don’t have the money right now to do this and there is nothing functionally wrong with the device. Needless to say, she didn’t like my answer.

After she calmed down about not replacing the iPod, the tables turned to cell phones. Our current cell phone contract is up and we’re going to switch providers, and get new phones of course. She thinks it would be a good idea to get an iPhone so she can get a new phone and an iPod in one device. I didn’t even have to say anything to let her know my answer. The iPhone is a toy! It is a very expensive, media hyped, expensive, fancy looking, expensive, toy! Then she just told me she would get it with her credit card. I feel like things are spinning out of control. As I am working so hard to avoid credit, spending, etc. the efforts are being counterbalanced by my wife.

Not sure what to do here anymore. I feel like we’re going in our own directions here and not working together. The pressure of having to borrow money to sell our house bothers the crap out of me. Sure it makes sense to trade a larger loan for a smaller one, but I think this is the wrong time to do this. I would like her to get finished with student teaching, currently a few miles from where we live, so that we could move next year once she’s done. The market sucks, moving sucks, and borrowing money to move sucks.

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I feel financially defeated this month already and the month has barely started. My wife’s friend had a birthday party this past Saturday and invited us downtown to celebrate with her. Since according to my wife that we never do anything fun, we had to go do this. I got my paycheck two days early so there was some money available now.

The weekend started with Friday going to the mall (I HATE MALLS!) and eating out at Subway ($13). Then we had to go shopping because I guess I needed a shirt. I got two shirts at the GAP ($62) I hope she won’t mind me wearing for at least two years. At least we went home after that.

Saturday brought the bulk of the expense. I got a haircut at a place down the street ($16) and my wife got her nails done ($40) at a salon she frequents, to her credit this is semi budgeted. Had to fill up the car with gas ($32) and got cash out of the ATM ($100) to bring with us. Drove to downtown Chicago, north side and searched for public parking for 45 minutes so we could stay with a friend (FREE!). Got some drinks ($15 from $100 cash leaving $85) and ate pizza (my friend covered it) and got ready to go out. We decided to take a cab to the lounge ($10 from cash, $75 left). This is where the fun part came in. For $35 a person, cover, drinks, included, to get into the place ($70 gone from cash, $5 bucks left). My wife and I made sure to get our money’s worth out of that though and after about 10 drinks I was good, my wife could still hold her own at 6. By now it’s roughly 2:30 in the morning downtown and we leave the bar and go to her friend’s new apartment. We decided to get some greasy food to go with our booze and I ended up using some random ATM and paid the fee ($20 cash plus $3 fee, whatever the food cost). We had to take a cab back to our friend’s apartment at 4 in the morning (used the last of cash).

Sunday my wife and I were probably slightly hung over from exercising a barely used drinking muscle but were able to function, just not very efficiently. We rolled out of my friends place around 1 in the afternoon and at lunch ($15) and then headed home. I didn’t do much of anything yesterday so I will have to do more today to make up for the loss of a weekend.

We still have bills to pay and need to keep on top of other things and now I feel down $300 starting out. I have a feeling we’re going to be eating at home all month and really watching the money situation for this month now. It is difficult for some reason for me to convey to my wife bills and expenses should be considered before other stuff, but that isn’t always the case. She still wants to move downtown but there is no way we could do this kind of thing every weekend. This month our cell phone plan is also up so that means we will be getting new phones as soon as possible. I just wish I knew how we were going to pay for them without causing a fight, but more on that later.

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I guess my wife feels that our bathroom was holding us back from actually listing our house in this lousy housing market. Lucky for me I had some help to get the bathroom painted. The paint is a blue color to go with our bedspread since the bedroom was already painted back in May. Granted I think the room probably could use some paint because the old stuff was cracking and faded in places.

We went through our closets and storage areas and found a lot of stuff we’re going to get rid of come trash pickup day. I just hope the garbage people will take it all away for us though so I don’t have to locate a dumpster. We need to find a second hand store to try to sell off the stuff we don’t want but don’t want to throw out. It would be nice to get some money for some of this stuff though.

I’m almost at the end of the month of July and there’s still money in the checking account! This has not happened in the past 3-4 months because of things carrying over funny or using money in there for checks making them hot. I hate writing hot checks too because you just never know how quickly that money may try to escape you.

My wife has a limited amount of time to work full time because school will start soon. She is concerned we’re not going to have enough money to make it without her working. After suggesting I get a second job, I suggested to her we should probably be adjusting our lifestyle to fit my income first? Could I get a second job if necessary? I’ve done many jobs prior to my career that may not pay very well but would bring some extra cash in. I’m not at all lazy but at the same time working 70 hours a week to keep things the same as they always are isn’t a solution.

I’m still mulling over things regarding selling this house. The costs of doing this are even more stressful and I don’t know if my wife is concerned about that. She continues to spend time checking out apartments online and pictures make things look so much better than how it is right now. Are stainless steel appliances and granite countertops with porcelain sinks neat? Sure it is but it also increases the monthly rent and delays our ability to get out of debt. I guess it boils down to a balance between money and lifestyle. More money does not mean better lifestyle and our lifestyle should not require more money.

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