January was a wonderful month in terms of finance charges paid. It was less than $100. Thinking back to when I first started this blog back in February of 2006, I shudder at the $400+ dollars I was paying every month towards finance charges.
It has been a lot of work to shuffle debt around, but it has been worth it.
Right now, there are three balances that I do not have to worry about changing interest rates (the interest rate is for the life of the balance): CC #1, CC#2 and my Prosper Loan.
CC #7 is a different story. The 0% rate I have on CC #7 will expire in June of this year. June may seem far away, but I am looking for balance transfer offers now instead of waiting to see if anything is available at the last minute.
My “target” debt at the moment is CC #2 since it is at 6.9%. After that I’m not sure what debt I will target next. If I can get a nice balance transfer offer for CC #7 then the next debt to pay off is my Prosper Loan. If I do not have a balance transfer offer, then CC #7 will likely have an interest rate in the 16%+ range, so I will pay that off and then target the Prosper Loan.
The day that I only have to worry about paying one card off is going to be a happy, happy day 
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About This Site
Credit Card Debt
- Starting = $37,614
- Paid Off = $29,141
- Current = $8,473
- $25 ING Savings Bonus
Savings Account
- Current = $3,750
Posted: February 5th, 2007 at 11:45 am
It’s impressive that you’re only paying around 5% in interest to service $25,000 in essentially unsecured debt.
Posted: February 5th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Yay Tricia! I’m also shopping around for a BT for an expiring zero interest rate. The offer flood has stopped right now, so I have to wait and see what might trickle in.
Posted: February 5th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Can you sell the things you bought on these cards to bring these balances down quicker? How about your cars? I rec. selling a TON of your possesions that even your kids think they are going up for auction on ebay! Could save you tons in interest and time!
Posted: February 5th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Wow - a $300 reduction in finance charges! That’s awesome! If you think about it, that’s $300 you can put towards the debt principal or your retirement. And, with your latest bump, it’s $300 less you have to worry about
Posted: February 5th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
WOW! I never really thought about how much I’m paying in interest rates before, I just knew it was a lot. I just added mine up and it’s $210. I’ll definately be making some calls tonight to try and get those interest rates lowered!
Thanks for the tip and I find your blog very helpful!
Posted: February 5th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Thats good, I was one of those people who paid my 0% rate late so it went up automatic, so I am real affraid to try it again.We get a bonus is Aug. so maybe that will be the one I pay off.
Posted: February 8th, 2007 at 8:07 am
[...] Jim noticed my post the other day on how much I am paying in finance charges monthly. He asked if I would write an article on how I managed to reduce my finance charges from over $400 to $100. It took about five months to reduce them that far, and here’s how I did it. [...]
Posted: March 1st, 2007 at 8:09 am
[...] and leave them. Between 0% balance transfers and asking, Tricia from Blogging Away Debt went from $400/mo in interest to a mere $100 - that’s $300 that can go towards [...]
Posted: March 8th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Having read this and having been inspired, I called 3 of our creditors and asked for a lower interest rate and they all said no. One said the reasons was because our account is over 24 months old and the other 2 just said they “don’t do” that. These accounts are very high, 20.99 to 22.65%. We never tried to get lower finance charges when we got accounts because we didn’t know to try to. We just took what was offered. But
I am sure getting educated now, reading on this site. Thank you.