pay off credit cards

We had gotten it to one credit card that was carrying a balance. A week or so ago, we paid it off. Technically, I could say this goal was complete, but I don’t feel confident that we can pay it off every month. I want to go a few months paying it off completely, and I want to keep enough in the checking account to cover it if we have unexpectedly high expenses some month. Once I feel comfortable that we’re really keeping the balance paid off, I’ll mark this goal as finished.

In the meantime, I’m reveling in the fact that we won’t be paying interest anymore!

But we took at look at it together on Saturday.

We have our “regular” credit card which we are now able to pay off every month (yay) and which we use for everything.

Then we have another credit card to which we’d moved credit card debt to get a 0% interest rate. That rate ends tomorrow. We called to make sure we weren’t going to be hit by retroactive charges (we won’t) and to confirm the interest rate we’ll now face. It’s less than our “regular” credit card’s rate, so that seems OK.

So, each month when we pay our bills and the regular credit card off, we’re able to put some money toward the other credit card. We could probably pay it off entirely in just a few months.

But we also talked about other expenses that are looming: A very old car that should be replaced before the repairs start costing more than a car payment would, home improvements, and vacation costs. We decided that we want to set aside money for those things on a routine basis, even if it means it will take longer to pay off this other credit card. So we scheduled some automatic transfers to set money aside for those things. We’re hoping we’ll be able to keep those transfers up while we continue to chip away at the credit card.

Spend as little as we can, I guess, and be patient. Our income is finally exceeding our outgo, so it should just be a matter of time. I hate that this goal is necessary. :(

We’ve been making progress on this. Every month we owe less.

However.

We had my car looked at last week. It is a 2000 and has 120 thousand miles on it. It needs 4 or 5 different things fixed, ranging in price from a few hundred dollars for one thing, to 1,400 for the most expensive thing. It’s not going to pass inspection in January. It’s time to trade it in. Sigh. Our cars were paid off. This means a car payment again. (Good news is, S’s car is a ‘98 but has much lower mileage and when looked at yesterday, was OK. We won’t need to get 2 new cars!)

Our dishwasher has been on its way out for a while. This morning, we officially announced it dead. I make a lot of small (and large) economies in my life, but I’m not doing without a dishwasher. I spent most of the last 15 years without one, but that time of my life is over. So that’s a looming expense.

Our 40-year-old concrete pool needs serious work. At minimum, we need to repair a crack around the filter. At maximum, we need to basically have the entire pool surround rebuilt to avoid another crack being created in the future, as well as the problem of the coping stones cracking and being pushed out of alignment. Anything short of the rebuild will just buy us a few years until problems reappear, so we’d love to do it right, right now. But it’d mean getting (another) equity loan, and that worries me. A lot. Especially for what’s essentially a luxury, though since since it’s already there, needing work, and getting worse without repairs, it is a necessary expense too. It’s all how you look at it, I guess.

Oh, and here comes Christmas, too.

S is doing bills right now.

He’s paying off the credit card we use all the time. Happy dance! Since we use it all the time, we’ll have to see that we can really pay it off every month before I really believe it. But it seems like we can, now.

And he’s able to pay about 1/4 of the amount on the other credit card—the one we transferred to for the 0% interest. We really want that paid off before the 0% interest ends!

Can’t believe an end is in sight on this!!!!!!

our financial situation will be less strained. But we need to really look at it closely and figure out what to do. Paying off our credit cards is priority #1, we both agree, but it will have to be part of an overall budget that will also include some needed home repairs, taking on a car payment (our cars are paid off but have high mileage and show it), and putting enough toward retirement than we can hope to avoid greeting shoppers to Walmart.

I really look forward to the day I can check this goal off!

We put just about everything on our credit cards. We’re those people who never have cash & don’t write checks unless we have to. This has a plus: we can see at a glance if our monthy expenses rise or dip, and if we’re losing ground, it shows! We’re not paying the balance down as fast as we’d like to, but we’re making progress.

We used to have a Barnes & Noble card, and earned gift certificates we could use there, but they discontinued that and started giving us something called World Points instead.

We never paid much attention, but the points racked up as we spent, and today we decided to use some. :::dances around excitedly::: We ordered an ipod for me! S’s had a shuffle for a while, and for work he has a video ipod, but I’ve barely touched them, let alone had my own. Now I’m going to have my own! It’s a 30 GB video. And it’s going to cost us nothing (well, 3/4 of our World Points, but no actual cash). Sure, sure, we could’ve redeemed points for gift cards and then used them for more practical purposes. Shut up. I’m getting an ipod! :::dances excitedly again:::

We just switched to our second 12-month 0-interest no-transfer-free card, since the 12 months on the first one had gone by. But the good news is that we pay the minimum balance on that every month and we don’t add to it.

And the other credit card, the one we actually use, is getting better too. Since we haven’t been paying day care anymore, we’ve been able to pay more than we charge each month, so the balance is going down. My Christmas bonus at work will pay for Christmas and a bit more, so that’ll help the balance too. And my salary increases 1/1, so we should be able to throw a little more at it each month.

I can’t wait until I’m able to say this is done!

Ha.

We thought we’d be saving sooo much money when E started public school. But he’s been there only 5 days and we’ve already:

• bought a t-shirt for him to wear for World Smile Day (they’re trying to get the whole school to wear them)
• ordered a book from the Scholastic book club (This will probably be a monthly thing. We’re very pro-books.)
• gotten a glossy catalog for the big fall fund-raiser
• paid for a field trip that’s happening next week
• paid fees for after-school activities
• gotten an order form for books by an author who is coming to the school. Actually, this is really cool, because it is the author of The Icky Bug Alphabet Book, which is one of his all-time favorite books.

But the point is, money seems to be flowing out, out, out. And did I mention he’s only been in school 5 days?

There might be some progress on this front soon. I hope.

We need a new roof, so we just got a home equity loan last week. We got enough that we could also pay off the car, ending a $210/month payment. The equity loan monthly payment is less than that, so the plan is to put the difference toward the credit card each month and when that’s paid off, put the difference in the bank to save for the next car. We are painfully aware that we paid off the car loan (which had only 2 years to go) with a 15-year loan. But we had to think about what we could actually manage to pay each month.

The big budget aid that is about to come, though, is that E is starting public school! We’ll be saving $238 a week in fees for his daycare (preschool).

With this change, we’re determined to do whatever it takes to live within our means and pay our credit card balances off. In the 3 years we’ve had a mortgage, we have not been living within our means (which is s-c-a-r-y), but we certainly haven’t been $238/week over budget either, so this should be manageable.

Our goal is to have the credit card paid off by next June, so that when the school year ends, we can afford to resume the weekly tuition & send E back to his daycare/preschool next summer. They have a school-age program in the summer.

And of course we have a million other things we want to be able to afford. But one step at a time.