Blogging Away Debt

Note to Self – Don’t Hide the Credit Cards So Well You Can’t Find Them When You Need Them

Our 0% offer for our credit card debt is expiring this month. I have been wondering about what we should do. Should I get a new card with a 0% offer? Should we transfer the balance to an existing card with a better interest rate? Should we live with the interest and just pay it?

As it turns out, the answer was right in front of me but I didn’t see it. I checked all of our cards for balance transfer offers, or so I thought. There was one that I forgot about so I looked into their offers. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the 0% balance transfer offer in front of my eyes. There was our answer. Woohoo!

I started the process of the balance transfer and hit a roadblock. I needed the card number from the company I was transferring from. I checked my usual credit card hiding spot. It wasn’t there. I checked other places I have hid them. Not there either. I hid our unused cards so well I couldn’t find them. Of course, I started wondering if I hid them in a piece of furniture that we recently sold.

Then, it hit me. I should check one more place. There they were. Whew. So I logged in last night and completed the transfer.

There is a balance transfer fee of $240. I’m not thrilled about that, but the finance charges would run close to $100/month if we kept our debt on the current card. Since it’s unlikely that we will be able to pay off our debt in a few months, the fee is worth it to have our debt at 0% until mid next year.

As for our cards, I put them back where I found them. It’s a pretty good hiding spot. But I should remember next time where they are LOL 🙂

Debt Update: $8,150.00

by Tricia

Thanks to selling more of our stuff, we ended up having some extra money to put towards our debt this month. That brings our debt total to $8,150.00. We are so close to getting under the $8K mark. If we didn’t have to save some of that money for junk removal, we would have made that milestone. I’m not sure how much the junk removal will cost, so we may end up having some left over.

We said goodbye to many things, like furniture and a video game system. Those brought in the most money. We also did have a garage sale and sold more stuff. But a lot of that stuff was under $1.00 (cheaper nick-nack types of things). It all adds up, though. My son also sold some of his old toys and made over $75 (he kept all money from selling his stuff). He was quite the little salesman. If someone had a question on one of his toys, he was right there showing them the ropes – even showing them other toys. There’s a lego set he’s had his eye on for some time now and he worked very hard to earn the money to get it. He was so cute!

I think we are basically done with trying to sell all of the smaller things we have. We have had four sales now (last year and this year), so all remaining smaller items are being donated to St. Vinny’s. That store has helped us so much when money was really tight, so it’s only fitting to give back. There are a few bigger things still left, so I might advertise them in the paper or make up some flyers.

September has been a rough month financially with taxes, medical bills, a car repair bill and a few yearly bills that were due. Selling some things helped to make it a positive month after all. Besides putting some towards our debt, we used some of it to replenish our savings account a little. The balance today is at $3,600. Yay!