pay off my credit card bills

just forced a look at my cc bills. gulp.

I hate this stress! Right now I have a little under 3000$ to pay off. School+living alone+ unexpected travel due to family emergency has added up, and soon I have to register for fall semester, which means added debt.

I decided to move into a much cheaper apartment to help with my financial situation, but had to overlap leases in the process, so while in the long run this will be helpful, right now I am feeling it HARD because I had to pay double rent for August and a security deposit on the new place. I am trying not to stress out too much, but it is definitely always in the back of my mind, and I am having to charge EVERYTHING because I have no cash.

I have updated my excel sheet, and hopefully the majority of this will be paid off by the middle of October. deep breath

i just chose to move back in with an old roommate, a big part of this decision was so that I can save money to pay off my CC. I should be able to save a ton this way!

I made a great decision just now. I got online to SHOP, but instead, I reaffirmed to myself that I did not need anything and did not need to spend any money!

:-)

That is progress!

pay day yesturday so went town and paid half my wages in

Put me WAY WAY behind in achieving this goal. After my temp assignment at the University of Washington ended it took me about 2.5 months to find another (lower paying) job. During that time I was denied unemployment and had to live on virtually nothing. Oh fun!

I couldn’t pay off my credit cards. Shit it was amazing I could even pay my rent. Even that was late.

I managed to talk the credit card companies down to lower minimums and lower APRs; however I am pissed because all of this just put me MORE BEHIND. I want to be free of this credit card bs once and for all.

Here goes. The spreadsheet adds up the balance on all the cards Shows interest payed and payment amount each month.
It shows me there is quite a bit of work to do!

Will be ok though. 5 Cards in total between me and the love of my life.
Together we can do anything!

I like Ingrids spreadsheet idea. This must be my next goal achieved so I’m going to do that.

I have a few credit cards with APRs that make my heart sink whenever I look at my statements. I look and think, “How the hell am I going to pay this off when the interest rate is 29%???”

There are a few strategies luckily. The first is the most obvious: paying your credit card bills on time. After a certain amount of on-time payments credit card companies will lower your APR.

The second is actually talking to the companies! I talked to one company and they brought my APR down from 12% to 6%. Not bad, eh?

I have been reading a book that gives a secret I didn’t think of—paying my bill twice a month! So far I have been paying my high interest credit card bills over the minimum payment due every month. To be honest I thought I was being slick.

Apparently it is possible to make two smaller payments each month and end up paying off your debts faster. With the two smaller payments less time occurs for compound interest to accrue.

i just made the most awesome spread sheet in excel to keep track of all my bills and savings… i think this will help me just because it makes me feel awesome. also by this time next year things should be paid off if i do things correctly.

I keep going back and forth on which one would be more beneficial to pay off first… I think that if I get one paid off then I’m ok with looking at homes to buy. I’m also thinking that maybe I should just put one on the other and get rid of the one… if that makes sense.