pay off my credit card

.... so I just paid this off….

Had a crappy night last night and reflected a lot on my finances and life and everything. Although I said just yesterday afternoon that I wouldn’t use my savings to pay my credit card, I just did. I wanted to be free from my debt so I can focus totally on saving for the future. And…. I guess I can now.

A month ago on this date I owed $1850. Now I don’t owe anything.

Weird. It’s sinking in, I guess.

Really making headway now, feeling really good about this! I’ve only been paying it off modestly in order to avoid the little pitfall I had last summer where I went wild paying off my credit card and then had to use it because I didn’t have enough money for the month… haha. Counterproductive!

So as of today I’m definitely at the lowest I’ve been in about 3 years and doing it much smarter than I did before.

It also makes me feel really great knowing that I have a savings account going on the side. Yes, I could just transfer all that money and pay it off for good, but having a savings account for the first time EVER in my adult life is just too amazing of a feeling to stop. It will be paid off soon enough and then I’ll have even more money to sock into my savings.

I got a Christmas bonus this year in Visa gift cards – am I able to use these towards my credit card charges or save them in a savings account? I’m not sure how much like “real money” they function… any theories?

it got a little high again and then when I checked the recent charges, it was because I had done some online shopping for Xmas and forgotten to pay immediately from my debit. I took care of those payments, transferring from chequing to my card, and also put down the money that my parents gave me for Xmas.

It takes a few hours for the bank account to reflect payments on my card, so we’ll see where we’re at then.

Paid this month’s payment according to my new payment plan – the way I set it up, that means 25% is paid. That’s a nice feeling.

It will be a challenge to make sure that I don’t spend too much on gifts, but I’m going to try really hard to insist on keeping things simple. I’m also going to really look at my Visa payments and savings as “bills” to pay – I think most successful savers consider it to be such.

I input all my budgeting info into the app I downloaded, and made one of my goals to pay off my credit card by February, although I would love to start the new year debt-free.

It’s pretty cool that you can choose your “end date,” and the app calculates how much you need to pay per month in order to meet that goal. I chose to make my end date February instead of January because I wanted to make sure my payments were reasonable, especially taking into account the holidays – even with the best intentions, I know I will spend more than usual around that time.

Also, I made another goal to save a certain amount of money by May 2012, which I can start saving for now. Combined with my credit card payments, I can afford to do both at the same time, and I think that will make me feel better. I ran into trouble in August because I overpaid on my credit card, and then when expenses came up, I was really low on cash. The result was that a couple of wedding purchases pushed my balance back UP again – booo. As much as I want to PUSH with all my weight towards paying the card off, I can see now how it’s not necessarily the best idea to focus entirely on that.

an app to help track this and keep it more at the forefront of my habits.

This was a good lesson. At the beginning of this month, I was anxious to make it to a somewhat arbitrary balance and paid down a lot towards my bill, not totally leaving enough for my expenses.

When our cat needed to go to the vet, we didn’t have extra in our joint account, as that is pretty limited to our monthly expenses only. Normally we would just transfer money in, but silly me didn’t have enough to cover that as well as the $150 dress I bought for my friend’s wedding, not to mention hosting an unexpected dinner… Because I was the one that took her to the vet, I paid for it on my cc, as I did with the other expenses. So my balance shot back up again.

It’s not really a huge issue, because now that it’s the beginning of the month, I can repay myself half from our joint account. Additionally, I was reimbursed for health expenses and can load that onto the card.

However it would’ve made a lot more sense to pay it down slowly and surely, avoiding having it go back up again bc I had paid out more than was sustainable. It’s a rule that intellectually I knew, but still needed to recognize.

So my mini goals are:

- use at least 1 whole reimbursement check for cc. Use some of the other one if possible.

- get down to $1000 balance and stay below that from now on.

This is what I didn’t want to happen – I got over-zealous about paying as much as possible towards my credit card and didn’t think carefully about my expenses in the week before payday.

My checking account has dwindled so low now that it’s the lowest it’s been in a long time. It should be fine until payday, but it’s not the most prudent way to pay off your credit card if you end up needing to use it because you run out of cash.

On the other hand, my credit card balance hasn’t been this low in over 2 years, which is great!

Found an old check from work reimbursing me for something I’d purchased, and also a 10 Euro note in an old purse.

Deposited them to bank account, then moved them to credit card.

I will reach that $800 balance mark by the end of August!