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May 23, 2012    |       4 comments

Holiday Weekend!

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These holiday weekends used to mean spending money!  I look back and marvel at how money would just fly out of our hands—starting with eating out Friday night…filling Saturday with shopping for random stuff…buying lots of food for a cookout for lots of friends on Sunday or Monday….maybe taking a day trip somewhere and spend spend spend!!!

This holiday weekend we are looking forward to having no money spending plans.  I actually want to rest and catch up on Madmen via Netflix.  I think I am a solid 2 seasons behind!  We also made plans with another couple that is trying to join the “debt payoff” club.  We are going to get together and have a budget driven holiday cookout with the challenged issued of not buying anything new for the get together.  We agreed if that means we are eating totally random stuff that doesn’t really “go together” because it is stuff we already have—all the more fun!  A financial support group of sorts.

It is so refreshing to be candid about debt.  It isn’t easy mind you—but it is so nice to be out in the open about our struggles and to share the excitement of our plan to pay it off.  So many people are in a dark place with debt and would die at just the thought of sharing the ugliness of debt out loud.  Remember….the truth will set us free!  I anticipate we will have so much more fun with our friends as we cut corners on fun and realize we are not alone.

May 19, 2012    |       8 comments

Discover is singing a different tune…

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Here come the 0% balance transfers from Discover card. Remember they would do nothing to help me knock down that 18.4% interest rate just a few weeks ago?  I found out about this offer b/c I got an email saying they were going to debit my account for the “minimum due.”  Well, with the balance at $0 I hopped onto the website to figure out why there was a minimum payment at all.

After sign on, a big opening page with “0% for 12 months on balance transfers” showed up.  The credit available on that card is $8,000 so I did some quick calculations to see what we would save if we moved the two smallest credit cards over.  It worked out to be a $205 fee for the balance transfer and we’d save $230 in interest.  Just not worth the hassle to me AND there is always the risk that we don’t pay it in 12 months and then that criminal interest rate of 18.4% returns.  So that was fun to look into for a minute…but more importantly…to have the power for a change.

I had to call to talk to a rep about the $46.00 interest charge.  I was told that was interest from those days where the balance remained-from the last pay cycle end date to the payoff date.  Thankfully Discover did the right thing this time and waived it when I asked.  And kudos to me for asking…there was a time that I would not have done so!

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