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Time To Attack Our Debt Again

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For a while there, we were concentrating on beefing up our savings account. As it sits today, we now have over $3,000 in our savings account. We’ve contributed some, and we’ve also received some help from others opening ING savings accounts using our referral links (thank you!). I feel good about having that much in there. That is more than enough to get us through a month of expenses.

I’ve been reading lately about credit cards magically raising their rates. That makes me nervous, because one of the reasons given by the companies is that the card holder had too much debt. We still have a large balance on our credit card and it’s at 0% right now. If it raised, well, that would be very, very bad (to put it lightly). It’s time to get back to attacking our debt.

We’ve had some money sitting in our checking account waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I set our finances on autopilot last week. I dug my nose in there today, and saw that we could pay $600 more to our credit card. Our credit card debt is now at $16,362.

I hope to be able to pay a little bit more before the end of the month, but we’ll see. I’m expecting a few checks in the mail, but I never count on them and I don’t “spend” them until I see them safely deposited into our bank account. Doing it like that keeps us out of trouble 😉


6 Comments

  • Reply Carol Rice |

    I hear you on that! The card I paid off with my tax refund had magically risen to 29.99%! I assumed it was a default rate (I was one day late on a payment when we moved), but when I called they said it was due to the “amount of debt”.

    I informed the lady that I had just scheduled a payment to clear the balance, and asked if I should expect that to lower my rate. She said I could call back and ask them to lower it, but there were no guarantees and it “CERTAINLY wouldn’t be automatically lowered.” Oh heaven forbid…

  • Reply Cheryl |

    Silly me. I assumed with the fed lowering the rate, that card rates may go down a smidge…..! Oh well…..makes me that much more determined to do everything I can to pay the dern thing off!

  • Reply Credit Card News |

    Some credit card companies are worse than others when it comes to ‘magically’ raising your interest rates. But luckily, recent congressional action has pressured some issuers to eliminate abusive practices such as ‘universal default’ fees and others. But there’s still much room for improvement…

  • Reply Ryan S. |

    Go Tricia! Hitting your debt (and hard!) is the best way to get a high guaranteed return on your money. Paying off a 19% card is like getting a 19% return on an investment!

    Ryan
    http://uncommon-cents.net/

  • Reply Matt |

    It’s amazing that you’ve been able to set aside that much money. I’m still struggling to keep up with my debts at least I’m managing to keep the wolves at bay so to speak and my minuscule savings are slowly growing. I think its time to do the same thing you did by concentrating on setting aside some emergency money.

  • Reply John |

    Congrats on the savings account! I think having and maintaining a savings account is the single biggest thing to promote financial security… it is that buffer that protects against needing a credit card. If I think back to my debt at origin, it really was a result of having a single unexpected expense and not being able to cover it…

    Which is why I find it amusing that the tax rebate that they have talked about in Congress, along with the one that Bush did soon after taking office, was carefully tabulated to be enough to do some good for the economy, but small enough that people would not be inclinded to spend it. They could give more, but are afraid we’d save it! Perish the thought!

    Congrats again Tricia, you remain an inspiration.

So, what do you think ?