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Yay! We received our economic stimulus payment today and I sent off a huge chunk of change towards our debt. Our payment was for $1,500 and I originally thought we would only use a portion towards our debt.
Well, I couldn’t resist using all of it to put towards our debt. That brought it to $9,198.
But I couldn’t stop there. I had to contribute $200 more to put it under the $9K mark. Our checking account will be tight for a while, but if the money isn’t there…we won’t spend it!
That brings our total credit card debt to $8,998! We have paid off over $28,000 of our credit card debt. My little graphic at the NCN Network made it really sink in that we are getting so close to debt payoff now.
We are definitely in the home stretch 
Following up on yesterday’s post about teaching teens about personal finance, here is a link to some free resources from The Hartford (an insurance and investment company):
The Hartford collaborated with the NCAA to produce a 36 page book that is geared towards teens and personal finance. How much information could they get into 36 pages? A LOT. There are sections about budgeting, interest, credit cards, evaluating job offers, insurance taxes, etc. I read through it and it is a great overview centered around a sports theme.
By itself, the Playbook would be a great resource for teens. What makes this Playbook even better is the accompanying 27 page Parent’s Guide that can be downloaded as well. The Parent’s Guide is full of tips on how to discuss personal finance with your son or daughter and even offers conversation starters. It reminded me of a teacher’s manual with how it followed what was in the Playbook.
Both books can be downloaded immediately or you can request multiple hard copies in the mail. Both methods are free. For further reading, there is even more information on the website that I linked to above.
While I was contacted by a representative of the Playbook for Life program to bring these books to my attention, I was in no way obligated to write about them. I think they are a great resource and they have the best price tag of all (free!). Kudos to The Hartford and the NCAA for providing them.
Jen sent me a link to a very interesting article from Boston.com. The Boston Bar Association and the District of Massachusetts US Bankruptcy Court are running a five-part program to help teens with personal finance issues. It comes complete with a scare tactic for the last lesson…the students sit in on a mock bankruptcy hearing.
Financial-literacy programs have sprung up in all 50 states, many of them launched by lawyers and bankruptcy judges who have had a firsthand glimpse of the social wreckage debt can cause. “Bankruptcy judges have realized in the past few years that there’s a gap in education, that many high schools aren’t teaching students about personal finance,” said Judge Feeney, who presided over the mock hearing. “We’ve decided to fill that gap.”
[Via Boston.com]
After reading the reactions from some of the students that were interviewed for the article, it sounds like the program is working. One student learned that credit card interest rates can rise as high as 25% when he thought it was only 5%. As of right now, 750 students have attended the program.
I don’t know about you, but if I was a teen and had to attend a bankruptcy hearing, I think that would have made me think twice about getting my first credit card in college. It also would have been beneficial to learn the other things that they covered in the first four sections of the program (budgeting, taxes, wants vs. needs). It would be interesting to follow up with the students they interviewed a few years from now to see how they are doing financially.
Thanks Jen for the link!
My bank has had online bill pay available for a few years now. Even the price tag (free) couldn’t get me to switch over to using it. When it comes to my finances, I am a bit of a control freak and I track my accounts down to the penny. Plus, I had a bill payment system that I was using for over 8 years.
About two months ago, I decided to give online bill pay a try. With stamp prices going up, even if we could save a few bucks a month maybe it was worth it. So I tried it with one bill. The next month I tried it with a few more. This month I am replacing all bill payment checks that I would write with online checks.
What was so special about my previous system? I say this with a little bit of shame…I am a “floater.” Because things were so tight for us financially way back when, I grew accustomed to timing our payments and including float time (I include mail time up until the time the check clears the bank as the float). As a result, our bills were often paid right before they were due.
You can’t do that with online bill pay. You schedule the date that the check is to be cut and mailed and that amount is deducted from your bank account that day. No more 3-5 day float. Even though our finances aren’t as tight as they once were, I still was taking float time into consideration when it came time to mail out payments. It was a very bad habit that needed to be broken.
Now that we are paying the bills we normally pay by check with online bill pay, I had to shift around our finances a little. With some bills I would wait until receiving a certain paycheck before sending. Now I have to do it after the paycheck before. So far the transition has been going well, but I do rest a little easier knowing that our savings account is there in case I goof up a little.
There is only one thing I do not like about online bill pay. With sending a regular check to a vendor you are able to know if and when that payment clears the bank. Not so with online bill pay. The only notice you will receive of a payment not making it to its destination is when you notice a previous balance on your next bill or you receive a late notice. The control freak in me likes to be a little proactive when it comes to payments getting lost in the mail. If I see that something hasn’t cleared a few weeks after sending, I like to call and let them know that payment was sent. I think it shows good faith on my part, and I believe it has helped me avoid late fees.
In hindsight, I should have started using online bill pay a long time ago. I’m breaking my bad floating habit and it is so much easier to pay a bill online than write out a check. We are also saving money on postage. If you have been thinking about giving online bill pay a try, just give it a test run with one payment and see what you think. Don’t be stubborn like me and not even try it once before forming an opinion
Our utilities have been increasing their rates across the board. While I haven’t looked at the specific increases for our electricity or gas, I can tell it has increased because we are using less but paying more. Our water bill is no exception - the rate has increased by 13%.
It doesn’t bother me too much that the rates increased for electricity or gas. I look at it as a reminder that would should be conserving where we can. There have been times when the TV has been left on even though no one is in the room. Reminders like a price increase help to get us back into conservation mode.
Now for the water bill. This one bothers me because we already conserve water and we are consistently billed for minimum usage. We cannot reduce this bill no matter what we do because it is already as low as it can go. The only thing we can do is pay the increase because we need water.
What about you? Have your utilitity prices increased significantly lately?
I received some good news this morning when I checked the IRS Where’s My Stimulus Payment site. Our payment is scheduled for Friday.
Of course, just because it is scheduled that doesn’t mean we will get it. But I can’t help but be excited. We may be under the $10K mark with our credit card debt in less than a week!
Sometimes it seems like it is taking forever to pay off our cards. But these little milestones really help to keep me going. Every milestone we hit gives me a little more “oomph” to keep attacking our debt.
I’m a little behind in my blog reading, so I took a quick stroll through my blog feeds to find a few articles I thought you would find interesting.
Arduous asks WWMD? (What Would MacGyver Do?) MacGyver was one of my favorite shows while growing up.
MBH wrote about forever stamps and how you are paying for choice. I also found out that the price of stamps is going up May 12.
Lastly, Prime Time Money talks about tax rebate scams. It’s a shame that things like that happen.
This week, be prepared to hear a little more from me. I’m probably going to take a little break tomorrow and then starting on Monday I am going to catch up on a lot of things on here and answer some questions from comments that have been left. So if you have something on your mind that you would like to ask, feel free to do so in the comments.
About This Site
Credit Card Debt
- Starting = $37,614
- Paid Off = $28,616
- Current = $8,998
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Savings Account
- Current = $3,203
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