pay off my credit cards

My balance is now under $3k on my “big card” and is getting pretty close to the balance on my other card, which I am hoping to also have mostly paid down by the end of the year, since I’m planning on doing some traveling. Imagine…this time next year I’ll be posting that my balance is below $2k, and then the next year…Maybe I’ll even get really serious and pay it off sooner.

Since I’ve been doing this, I’ve gotten totally out of the habit of using my credit cards, and I haven’t missed them. Once I get them paid down their only use will be travel and emergencies, which should have been the case from the beginning.

The fun thing about actually making progress paying off a credit card is that the lower the balance gets, the more of a dent each payment makes. This month’s payment will put me below $4K on the one card, which I can hardly believe. I don’t remember when the balance was that low. Yes, I realize how crazy it sounds to think $4 is low, but considering I was starting at $8K, I’m pretty mtherf_ing proud of that.

Last year I called my Visa people and whined to them that I didn’t think I’d ever pay my card off. They had been raising my rate for a while because I had over a certain balance but continued to use the card…never mind that I was paying on time. Anyway. So I got them to put me in a payoff program. They slashed my interest rate, and for the last year and a half I have paid off more than $2000 of it. By Xmas I will be under $5K for the first time in YEARS.

I have one other credit card with a little still on it, but I expect to have that one paid off by this time next year, if not sooner.

This is something I knew I had to get serious about because soon I will have to start paying more on my student loans each month in order to ever pay them down. Right now I’m barely making a dent. And I’ll probably be looking at a new car payment in the next couple of years, so there’s that too. Man, I wish the Asskicking Fairy had come to visit me when I got that first preapproved card in the mail. I know what she would have said: “If you open that envelope, you will still be paying for it when you’re 30.”