Not a long post for my 100th, but I wanted to give a quick update that my stimulus payment came in the mail today and I’ve already deposited it in my account. As soon as it clears it’s going towards credit card debt.
Woo Hoo!
Interesting article about the credit card regulation on LAtimes.com today.
Among other things, the regulation asks for:
But what I found to be one of the best excerpts from the story was:
Just ask Victoria Ramirez. The San Jose elementary school teacher once had as much as $45,000 in debt on six different cards.Now she and her husband have whittled that down to a balance of about $10,000 on a single card.
Ramirez, 37, said card issuers make it all too easy to get into trouble.
“They loan you a big amount of money that you can’t take care of,” she said.
This isn’t so different from what’s happening in the housing market. One reason so many people are in danger of losing their homes right now is because banks handed out high-risk loans to folks who had no business getting deep into debt.
To be sure, many such loan recipients deserve a share of the blame for being so reckless with their personal finances. But they wouldn’t have gotten into trouble without the willing complicity of lenders, which encouraged virtually all home buyers to take the plunge, regardless of their ability to repay loans.
While I agree with that – I’m most impressed by her debt reduction. They don’t say how she did it or what the time frame was, but debt reduction is debt reduction and I can’t wait to join the club.
Also, I just want to call out that I don’t think that the debt crisis is the credit companies fault. And I don’t think that they are to blame for my situation either. I think we should all be responsible. But drug dealers that don’t do drugs still go to jail, know what I mean? Sure people have to be responsible for their actions, but they should not be enabled to ruin their lives.
Sorry for the delay – due to the new pay check schedule most bills of mine are now getting paid during the first month of the week. So I wanted to wait for some of the checks to cash before tallying up this month’s net worth.
Like I said in my last post, July/August hasn’t been the best of times. But, I never expected this stuff to be easy, nor did I truly expect my net worth line (located on the right hand column) to skyrocket straight up month-after-month. It would have been nice, but not realistic.
The main thing is that these past few months have served as a wakeup call and reinvigorated my desire to pay down this debt. I want to have the freedom to buy a home – maybe some rental properties. I don’t know really – but basically the key word/phrase is that I want freedom.
Last night, my dog tried to help me in my fight against credit cards and debt. Though, she took a few “innocents” along with him. I fell asleep on the couch last night, before I put her in her crate and she ate my wallet – or at least a quarter of it.
She ate my emergency credit card and my debit card. As well as a few other things, but thankfully no money or checks.
Oh well, I needed a new wallet anyway.
(by the way, I’m about 1/2 way through reading the Dog Whisperer’s book, “Cesar’s Way” – so hopefully the eating of wallets will soon be a thing of the past)
A little while ago, I posted that I was entering an active job search.
It went VERY well – I went through a recruiter for the first time in my life. And although I wasn’t sure what to expect, the entire process was fairly easy, very quick and extremely successful.
The entire process went about 3 days (I know – I was shocked too).
Why is it relevant to this blog?
Well, there’s some more money coming my way and that means I can pay off my debts faster.
Very exciting. In fact, I’m not sure what I’m more excited about? The new job or the bigger debt payments. Either way, it’s close.
Thanks to everyone that wished me luck on the job search – either through a comment or an e-mail – it worked!
Like I said before, it feels good to see the good numbers increase and the bad numbers decrease each month. God, is it slow though. Oh well…I should get a nice little bump up in the amount I can contribute soon – details in next post.
As for the bankrate.com experiment – You’ll notice I only made it to day 5. Why is that? ‘Cause weekdays are easy to keep track of – it’s the weekends when you’re out and about that are difficult. Let’s face it – I’ve said it before – I need to make whatever I do painless and automatic or else eventually I just won’t do it anymore.
The first step in victory is learning where it is you’re most likely to lose.
…is that a quote? ‘Cause I think it sounds good…and I’m pretty sure I just made that up.
Thanks to my trusty overpayment to Uncle Sam. I received my Federal Tax Refund yesterday.
Most of it went to paying off a credit card – my snowball plan has changed drastically since transferring a lot of my debt to recently opened 0% cards. That’s for the next post though.
But the rest of it went to bumping my “Income Security Account” (a.k.a. Emergency Fund) to $1000 status. I will still make my small monthly contributions, since I figure it can’t hurt and I barely notice the money is being taken out of my account anyway. Frankly, I’m just relieved that my Emergency Fund is up to a decent/recommended amount. Especially considering the alarming number of people out there that don’t have any money saved up “just in case”.
For my state return, which will be around $400, I’m planning to put about half of that towards my Christmas Gift account and the rest will help me get down to Florida for my buddy’s bachelor party in a few months.
And yes…again…I know it’s probably better to not get as many refunds or as much of a refund back at the end of the year. But there’s something therapeutic about these lump sum allocations that is worth the time missed. Maybe I’m alone on that.
