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Happy Halloween Everyone!

I didn’t get a chance to sneak this in earlier, but I hope everyone is having a safe and happy Halloween.

Right after I finished work, we quickly ate dinner and then we got my son all ready in his costume. I must say, he was a handsome little ghost

Unfortunately, the weather was horrible this year and we were faced with temps in the twenties and 30mph wind gusts. We only lasted about 40 minutes before we headed home since all of us were freezing!

But, we still had fun

Posted by Tricia on October 31, 2006 at 7:40 PM in Misc | 5 Comments »
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Why Shouldn’t You Close a Credit Card?

First of all, thank you everyone for the well wishes with feeling better. Today I do feel a little bit better. I think with traveling I probably picked up a bug or something.

Yesterday I discussed how I paid off Credit Card #6 and how I want to close it. Some of you mentioned that I might not want to close it for it could affect a FICO score.

From everything that I read, closing your card can affect your FICO score in two ways:

1.) Length of credit history. Something that FICO scores take into consideration is the length of history in regards to your open lines of credit. The longer you have a card, the better it is for your FICO score.

2.) Your debt to credit limit ratio. When you close a card, you are losing whatever credit limit they gave you. When you do that, you are raising your debt to credit limit ratio (for the most part). Here’s an example using my numbers (please note I removed the balance due on my Prosper loan here, but I include that amount within my credit card debt totals for my updates).

Total Credit Limit = $57,000
Total Debt = $22,700

We are currently using around 40% of our total credit limit available.

If I close CC#6, our total credit limit will be reduced to $55,000 and we will be using almost 41% of our total credit limit available.

Since CC#6 is one of the more recent cards, it shouldn’t affect the length of our credit history too much since it was just opened this year. We have older cards that are still open. As for the debt to credit limit ratio, a slight decline of 1% probably will not do much overall to reduce our FICO score.

Now, I do have one credit card with a limit over $25,000 that has a zero balance. No matter what the terms are on that card, I will keep it open. It is the card that I’ve had the longest (and started it all with our credit card debt) and it has a huge balance not being used. If I closed that card, our debt to credit limit ratio would skyrocket.

So, if you are wondering about closing any of your cards, take a look at the impact it will have on the points I mentioned above. It may be best just to keep cards, sign up for online access and receive balance emails (if you can) to monitor for unauthorized use (also check the statements). If you are worried about using your cards, a safe place you could store them is a safe deposit box at the bank.

For more info on figuring out the age of your credit cards, check out this article at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. He goes more in depth.

Posted by Tricia on October 31, 2006 at 12:03 PM in Credit Cards, Credit Reports/FICO | 7 Comments »
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A Contest to Win 5 Personal Finance Related Books

Jim over at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity is celebrating reaching 500,000 visitors. To have some fun, he’s running a contest and one lucky winner will receive 5 personal finance related books from his bookshelf.

All you have to do is visit his blog (which you should do anyways – good stuff over there), and leave a coment on his post detailing the information about the contest.

One catch, though…he wants you to leave a “Laffy Taffy” type joke with your comment.

He’s drawing the winner at Midnight on November 3rd, so there’s still time to enter.

Have fun and good luck!

Jim – congrats on the achievement!

Posted by Tricia on October 31, 2006 at 11:08 AM in Blogging Buddies | 1 Comment »
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A Credit Card Paid Off and a Debt Update

As I discussed a few days ago, we decided to pay off Credit Card #6. Today, the card was paid off in full. Once I receive the statement where the balance is zero we will then close the card. That card was my first and last store credit card. My lesson was learned there!

So, with that payment, our total credit card debt as of today is $25,854.

Sorry so short. I am feeling really under the weather today. Hopefully I’ll be feeling better soon.

Posted by Tricia on October 30, 2006 at 2:36 PM in Credit Cards, Debt Updates | 8 Comments »
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Is Anyone Having Trouble Leaving Comments?

I had a visitor email me with troubles leaving a comment. There were error messages preventing her from leaving a comment. Is anyone else having a problem as well?

It could be the visitor’s older system, or it very well could be me tinkering around with my template *blush*. For those who remember when I first started Blogging Away Debt – you’ll remember I started off with a nice template on my own domain name and I goofed it up within the month (I was then using Movable Type, now I am using Wordpress). Then I had to move to a free blogspot.com blog *double blush*.

If you are having troubles leaving a comment, please email me to let me know.

Thanks!

Posted by Tricia on October 29, 2006 at 10:31 AM in Misc | 3 Comments »
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I May Have Found the Perfect Coin Bank for My Son

One of the things that I want my son to learn about is saving money. While he was at grandma’s house, he was a little spoiled and grandma raided her coin jar and gave my son a pretty big container of coins. The first thing he said when we got home is that he wanted to go to Walmart to buy something. I tried to explain to him that he should some of the money and he didn’t seem happy with that idea.

I decided to go online and look at coin banks and I think I found the perfect one for my son, since he loves trains.

(if you click on the picture it is a referral link to Amazon.com)

When you put money in, the lights go off and you hear train sounds. I know my son would scavange the house for all the money he could find just to put the money in there to hear the sounds.

The cheapest I’ve found it is $19.99 and while it is a little pricey to me, if it gets him into the saving mood then the little extra money will be worth it. He’s had a regular piggy bank before, but it didn’t excite him.

The only drawback to the bank that I can think of is the size. It will take a lot of money to even halfway fill the bank. It makes me wonder how much money my son will have when he fills it!

I will discuss this possible gift with my husband tomorrow during our weekly family meeting (more on this new development later) and perhaps I will be placing an order soon for it. I just think my little guy would love it.

Posted by Tricia on October 28, 2006 at 7:06 PM in Spending Money | 6 Comments »
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What to Do When Balance Transfers End

I have a balance transfer offer ending next month for Credit Card #4. I am very sad to see it go because it was a nice 3.9% interest rate. I’m also sad that November is here because I hoped I would have paid off more of the balance. There is still $5,104 left.

The rate will shoot up to over 15%, so I have to figure out what to do with that balance.

I have two cards that I could transfer the balance of $5,104 to:

CC#2 – 6.90% for six months, no balance transfer fee
CC#3 – 7.99% for the life of the balance, no balance transfer fee

I am leaning towards going with CC#3 even though the rate is higher. Why? Because CC#4 was in both of our names and affected both of our FICO scores. CC#2 is the card in my name only. CC#3 is in my husband’s name. If I move that balance to my CC#3, my FICO score should move up because my debt utlization ratio will be lowered.

In doing this, I am taking a chance that I may be able to qualify for one of those 0% balance transfer offers from a new credit card soon (although the thought of getting another credit card makes me shudder).

This is the difficult part of trying to deal with debt. It would be so nice to just have the entire balance under one loan and one locked reasonable rate. I’ve thought about trying Prosper again for a loan to cover all of my debt since it is almost under $25,000 (Prosper’s loan limit). But I doubt I would be able to get a nice low rate due to the high amount. The same goes with the banks. To get the lower rates I need to play the balance transfer game.

Hmm…I just checked Prosper’s loan calculator, and if I borrowed $25,000 at 9.9% (which is what my current smaller loan is at), it would be a little over $800/month for my payment. I’m pretty sure we could usually pay more than that and pay off the loan before three years. Plus, I think my stress level would go down because I wouldn’t have to worry about making all these smaller payments on time. The convenience of one huge loan is very attractive.

I dunno. I think I am going to have to think this over some more. If anyone out there has thoughts – feel free to share.

Posted by Tricia on October 28, 2006 at 9:48 AM in Credit Cards, General Debt | 6 Comments »
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