Blogging Away Debt Our Journeys to a Debt-Free Life

by Tricia

3 Things About Money left a comment on my post asking if you fantasize about being out of debt. It brought up a good point.

I totally fantasize about being out of debt. Of course, I imagaine buying a new car and a better house and then…I’ll be right back in debt. The fantasy is really useful as a way to notice how much more emotional work I need to do so that I never go into debt again.

One of my big dreams is to have a house on the lake or have a house with a lake view. Where I live, that can be accomplished for $150,000 – $300,000 dollars. Unless we have a HUGE jump in income or win the lottery…we are going to have to take on more debt.

I always thought…if we just paid off the debt we have now, we’d be able to afford buying the home of our dreams. But with a home that expensive, we’d be in debt more than we are now (our total debt is shy of $91,000). We would probably be able to afford the mortgage payment, but how would it feel to be back where we are now with total debt?

What will win? A dream…or debt?

I think I have some more emotional work to do as well 🙂

by Tricia

I’ve been signed up for a credit monitoring program since August of 2004. What’s nice about it is that I now have a history of my FICO score through TransUnion. I can see the ups and the downs.

Here’s a screenshot…

Back in August of 2004, my FICO score was 726. I do not have the screenshot here, but just a year earlier it was around 680. The biggest change that occurred is that a medical account that went to collections fell off my credit history because enough time had passed. That gave my credit score an instant boost because I didn’t have any other lates on my report.

Then, something happened in early 2005 and it reduced to 704. I know exactly what caused that. That was when my credit card was used heavily for my husband’s business. Therefore, my credit utlization ratio raised and my credit score lowered. My cards were soon almost maxed out.

After that, my credit score has teeter-tottered back and forth a little bit. Some of that has to do with the credit card companies raising my credit limit (therefore raising my score) and then I would charge more on the cards (therefore lowering my score).

This year, as soon as I started paying off the credit card debt, my credit score started going up. Looking to the future, as more debt is paid off I expect my credit score to keep raising. I would love to get to 800 at least once in my life, just to say I did it. Time will tell 😉