Comments on: Finance Charges Paid in March – $417.49

By: Blogging Away Debt » Blog Archive » A Reflective Look Back at 2006 - Goodbye to $13,000 of our Debt

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 14:01:16 +0000

[...] Finance Charges Paid in March – $417.49 – When I added up how much it was costing me a month to have my credit cards, the total wasn’t pretty. [...]

By: Tricia

Tricia — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 05:46:00 +0000

john omm – Wow! Those are some serious finance charges! They are more than my family makes in a month. I keep track of my other charges, but not monthly. Usually quarterly I check on them. Now, for my auto loan I check more frequently because in 5 months it will be paid off. I love watching it dwindle

sean – I had to look for a few minutes on my one credit card statement to find where they listed the finance charge rate. They really should put it more up-front-and-center, but they don’t want you to notice

lamoneyguy – great question about why it is increasing. I currently have a project going on that and I hope to have a post about it within the next few weeks

chitown – unfortunately, I don’t pay enough in interest or have enough deductions to itemize. So I am just paying with no “benefits”. One good thing is that my home was only $35,500 and my monthly payment is $337.00. So, I’m not taking too bad of a hit compared to others.

Thanks everyone for your comments and your support!! I knew blogging about this would help keep me focused and more determined

By: Chitown

Chitown — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 00:45:00 +0000

Great idea. Seeing the number will give you more incentive to pay the debt off. I don’t worry so much about the interest on my home because of the deductibility factor.

By: LAMoneyGuy

LAMoneyGuy — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 19:18:00 +0000

Great idea to keep close track of this. I would also include any fees incurred, such as late fees or over the limit. This would all be bundled in an expense category that I would call, “cost of debt.” Ouch. $417. Well, at least you are aware of it and doing something about it. Can I ask why it is going up?

By: sean

sean — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 18:57:00 +0000

Excellent idea Tricia – I really like this one.

Even though we’ve got a reasonably large balance on our credit cards, it doesn’t end up with large finance charges because they’re all locked in on low-interest-for-life-of-the-debt balance transfers (and we’ve stopped using them entirely). The one that’s now bugging me is the interest on the mortgage. Being a new home owner, that mortgage payment is almost entirely interest. And every month, they’re telling me exactly how much is going to their bottom line instead of ours… :/ If the credit card companies did something similar, I’d bet people would be a lot more motivated to get that credit habit monkey off their back.

By: John OMM

John OMM — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 17:09:00 +0000

We keep close track of all our finance charges: credit cards ($47), car loan ($99), student loans ($766), and home loans ($2398). It keeps us motivated to move more quickly in getting them paid down. Afterall, we have better things to do with that $3310 each month.