Blogging Away Debt Blogging Away Debt follows real people on their journey to debt freedom — with tips on the debt snowball, budgeting, cutting expenses, and staying motivated.

by Tricia

Oh I love the weekend! I’ve been doing well with doing exercises instead of physical therapy and I can start to feel a difference with my knees. In fact, I just got done having a little dance session by myself. Ok, so maybe we shouldn’t call it dancing. Probably more like flinging around like a mad woman. LOL. In any case, it was good fun and I should do it more often.

For today’s link love, I’d like to point out a few things that I have participated in lately. First up is credit card survey over at Mr. Credit Card. He asked quite a few personal finance bloggers some questions about their credit cards. One interesting tidbit – 23% of them didn’t know their credit score. I was a bit surprised about that one. Nice job Mr. Credit Card for putting all of that together!

Next up is an article written by Dr. Mike from NewsAboutKids.com about teen finances. He approached me and asked a simple question: What three tips would I tell a teenager about money. He also asked many others and put together a very nice article that you can share with your teen.

Lastly, a fellow blogger is looking to interview people in debt. If you are interested in sharing your story, head on over to Blunt Money for more info. She doesn’t bite 🙂

I hope all of you are having a great weekend!

by Tricia

I started working on our net worth for July and I noticed that our credit card debt didn’t go down one penny since the end of June. That couldn’t be right…could it?

You know that feeling of blood rushing through your body when you think you just made a mistake? That was exactly what it was like to see that we didn’t make a credit card payment in July. I quickly logged into our account online and I see a minimum amount due glaring at me. I am thanking my lucky stars that the due date was Friday.

I made a payment so that is fine. This is the card at 0% right now and the last thing I want is to lose that interest rate prematurely. Our checking account isn’t so fine. That payment put us in an overdraft situation if we pay our gas bill on time. I haven’t mailed it yet, so I’m going to pay it a little late this month.

I feel like I am back to the “good ole days” of shuffling around payments because money was so tight. We shouldn’t have to revert back to that. I don’t want to revert back to that! But I have been losing focus the past week or so. This happens every time when life gets too hectic on other fronts. The biggest culprit is usually work and that is the case this time. It takes up so much of my energy (especially when I have to work late) that the last thing I want to do is work on the computer more after work. Unfortunately, that also affects my blogging so that’s why I haven’t been around here on a daily basis lately. Even my participation in our budding business has come to a screeching halt because that is computer-based.

But back to the topic on hand…losing focus can be bad. We almost lost our 0% interest rate. If it wasn’t for me trying to update my already overdue net worth on here – I would have missed that payment. So I thought I would ask all of you for your input…

How do you keep focused on your finances when life is crazy? What tips can you share with others?