My third card is yet another credit card on which I carry a hefty balance. This one currently stands at $7,400 with a 1.99% interest rate until March 1, 2011.
The scary thing about carrying these abysmally high balances is that one of these days one of my cards will hit the end of that low-interest-rate grace period, and I won't have anywhere to transfer it to. Suddenly, I'll be paying 20% or more in interest. My budget couldn't handle it.
That, of course, is why these balances need to be paid down. The stress. The financial burden. All of it.
The irony of the fact that I am largely accumulating new money by selling stuff I acquired with the old money is not lost on me!!
On other fronts, I started an Inquiry with Amazon to make sure my Webkinz Black Lab purchaser isn't a serial faker when it comes to claiming packages never arrived. What a great way to acquire merchandise that would be! (For a dishonest person, I mean.)
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Card #2
#2 is my fairly new USAA card. I nearly cried when I got this card.
It has been my habit for some time to shuffle around my credit card balances (a sure sign that you have a credit card debt problem!). Well, some months back, right around the time I needed to engage in my shuffle, I called one of my cards to ask them to increase my credit line. Instead, they canceled my card. Canceled! Did not see that coming. I was agonizing: What's so different about me? Is it the economy? Is it me?
The next day, I got a letter in the mail from yet another credit card company informing me that they were reducing my balance! That was another first. And coming right on the heels of the cancellation, it really wigged me out.
A few days later, I got an offer in the mail from USAA. Now, if you've never heard of USAA, let me fill you in. They are the MILITARY credit card company. One of my mother's military ex-husbands had many years ago slapped my name on his list of dependents. (During the application process, I had to identify both him and his birth date; that took some serious guesswork.) Anyway, unlike the other credit card companies, they're not in business to rip you off. I mean, to make a profit. They are in business to help the military. The usual banking, loans, all that stuff.
Anyway, I filled out an application over the phone with them. I fully expected to get turned down. Instead, they offered me a credit line in excess of $12,000 with 0% interest on balance transfers until February of 2011. I couldn't jump on that fast enough! So I am carrying a balance of $12,322 on this card as of today. At 0% interest.
The beauty of a 0% interest rate on a credit card with a hefty balance (in addition to the obvious) is that it automatically forces you to pay down your balance. Since I am paying NO interest, my entire minimum payment (1% of the balance) each month goes straight off of my principal. So if I do nothing else, at the end of a year I will have paid off around $1,500 of the balance just by making the minimum payments!
It has been my habit for some time to shuffle around my credit card balances (a sure sign that you have a credit card debt problem!). Well, some months back, right around the time I needed to engage in my shuffle, I called one of my cards to ask them to increase my credit line. Instead, they canceled my card. Canceled! Did not see that coming. I was agonizing: What's so different about me? Is it the economy? Is it me?
The next day, I got a letter in the mail from yet another credit card company informing me that they were reducing my balance! That was another first. And coming right on the heels of the cancellation, it really wigged me out.
A few days later, I got an offer in the mail from USAA. Now, if you've never heard of USAA, let me fill you in. They are the MILITARY credit card company. One of my mother's military ex-husbands had many years ago slapped my name on his list of dependents. (During the application process, I had to identify both him and his birth date; that took some serious guesswork.) Anyway, unlike the other credit card companies, they're not in business to rip you off. I mean, to make a profit. They are in business to help the military. The usual banking, loans, all that stuff.
Anyway, I filled out an application over the phone with them. I fully expected to get turned down. Instead, they offered me a credit line in excess of $12,000 with 0% interest on balance transfers until February of 2011. I couldn't jump on that fast enough! So I am carrying a balance of $12,322 on this card as of today. At 0% interest.
The beauty of a 0% interest rate on a credit card with a hefty balance (in addition to the obvious) is that it automatically forces you to pay down your balance. Since I am paying NO interest, my entire minimum payment (1% of the balance) each month goes straight off of my principal. So if I do nothing else, at the end of a year I will have paid off around $1,500 of the balance just by making the minimum payments!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Card #1
I have four active credit cards.
#1 is my Amazon.com Visa card, which I acquired solely because they gave me $35 in credit. Given my history with Amazon (I think they'd go under without my persistent shopping), I knew I would use that.
Anyway, I made it my primary credit card on Amazon, and I only use it for that purpose. I like that, because it enables me at a glance to see just how much money I blew on Amazon in any given month. It's always something. If nothing else, we order a good deal of gluten-free food from Amazon—and it's a bargain. For example, we order a case of large bags of Mesa Sunrise (a great, healthy, gluten-free cereal) every single month. Maryanne eats it for breakfast. Cathy eats it for breakfast. The bunny eats it for breakfast. We run it through the blender to make gluten-free bird food, so the birds eat it for breakfast. The dog eats it for breakfast. Okay, fine. The dog only eats the part the rest of us spill. Everybody eats it except for the ferret, and that's only because she won't eat anything but her ferret food.
I pay this card in full every month. It was where I drew the line. If I can't even pay my AMAZON bill in full every month, what am I doing with my life??
So this card has bonus points. Last December, I decided to check into that. It turns out that one of the things I can exchange these points for is CASH. And I was up to 4 x $50 checks!! So that's precisely what I ordered.
This morning I went and looked at my points again, and I had enough for another $50 check. So I ordered it! I had other options, of course. For example, I could have ordered a $50 BP card. But, um...
This is a great system. I think it's going to work out for me. I hope so. I'd hate to have to go to Plan B, which is move out of my house after my kids are “launched” and live in my car until my credit card debt is paid off... Let's just say that I've been paying a lot of attention to all those tent cities that have been springing up in this economy...
#1 is my Amazon.com Visa card, which I acquired solely because they gave me $35 in credit. Given my history with Amazon (I think they'd go under without my persistent shopping), I knew I would use that.
Anyway, I made it my primary credit card on Amazon, and I only use it for that purpose. I like that, because it enables me at a glance to see just how much money I blew on Amazon in any given month. It's always something. If nothing else, we order a good deal of gluten-free food from Amazon—and it's a bargain. For example, we order a case of large bags of Mesa Sunrise (a great, healthy, gluten-free cereal) every single month. Maryanne eats it for breakfast. Cathy eats it for breakfast. The bunny eats it for breakfast. We run it through the blender to make gluten-free bird food, so the birds eat it for breakfast. The dog eats it for breakfast. Okay, fine. The dog only eats the part the rest of us spill. Everybody eats it except for the ferret, and that's only because she won't eat anything but her ferret food.
I pay this card in full every month. It was where I drew the line. If I can't even pay my AMAZON bill in full every month, what am I doing with my life??
So this card has bonus points. Last December, I decided to check into that. It turns out that one of the things I can exchange these points for is CASH. And I was up to 4 x $50 checks!! So that's precisely what I ordered.
This morning I went and looked at my points again, and I had enough for another $50 check. So I ordered it! I had other options, of course. For example, I could have ordered a $50 BP card. But, um...
This is a great system. I think it's going to work out for me. I hope so. I'd hate to have to go to Plan B, which is move out of my house after my kids are “launched” and live in my car until my credit card debt is paid off... Let's just say that I've been paying a lot of attention to all those tent cities that have been springing up in this economy...
Happy Ongoing Fourth of July!! ...or not...
I am exhausted. It wasn't bad enough that exuberant young people (not really my first choice of description) set off firecrackers in the street endlessly on the Fourth of July, disrupting the sleep of literally hundreds of people until the wee hours. Nope. That's not enough.
Last night when I went to bed, it was raining. I hoped that the rain would last for hours. But, no. It ended. And at 11:42pm, I was ripped out of my sleep by firecrackers in the street. Again. At 11:46pm, I called the Sheriff's office non-emergency line. The lady asked me where the problem was, and I told her my location. Then she asked whether I wanted an officer to contact me directly. I said, “No, I just want him to shoot them.”
She laughed and laughed. But then I remembered that I was on a recorded line, so I added, “Obviously, I'm exaggerating slightly.”
I don't like feeling like I need to go back to bed from the second I wake up! Shooting may have been too good for them.
Last night when I went to bed, it was raining. I hoped that the rain would last for hours. But, no. It ended. And at 11:42pm, I was ripped out of my sleep by firecrackers in the street. Again. At 11:46pm, I called the Sheriff's office non-emergency line. The lady asked me where the problem was, and I told her my location. Then she asked whether I wanted an officer to contact me directly. I said, “No, I just want him to shoot them.”
She laughed and laughed. But then I remembered that I was on a recorded line, so I added, “Obviously, I'm exaggerating slightly.”
I don't like feeling like I need to go back to bed from the second I wake up! Shooting may have been too good for them.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Kim Possible
I'm so happy!! (Ah, the mood swings!)
I relisted a huge lot of Kim Possible items on eBay as “buy it now” after not having sold it TWICE through regular auctions. (That cost me $3 for nothing.) I received one inquiry from someone who wanted to make sure there were no duplicates in the lot. And he bought it!!
$49.95, free shipping. Of course, it probably cost me upwards of $200 when I bought it all, but what are you gonna do?
Sometimes the environmentalist in me is just happy that a gently used item has found a new home. Ditto the anti-hoarder. But in this particular case, after two failed auctions, this lot had really just become an albatross around my neck.
I relisted a huge lot of Kim Possible items on eBay as “buy it now” after not having sold it TWICE through regular auctions. (That cost me $3 for nothing.) I received one inquiry from someone who wanted to make sure there were no duplicates in the lot. And he bought it!!
$49.95, free shipping. Of course, it probably cost me upwards of $200 when I bought it all, but what are you gonna do?
Sometimes the environmentalist in me is just happy that a gently used item has found a new home. Ditto the anti-hoarder. But in this particular case, after two failed auctions, this lot had really just become an albatross around my neck.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
JULY TALLY $21,517.77
I've been depressed all evening.That black lab still hasn't arrived. If it doesn't arrive in Tuesday's mail, I will order a new black lab directly from Amazon so that the boy has it by Thursday. If that happens, I will LOSE $3 on the transaction. Even if the black lab arrives on Tuesday, I'll still have to refund something because it was supposed to go “expedited shipping”.
Stupid post office.
That's what I get for never paying for tracking or insurance. I mean, who knew the post office was this incompetent?!? Yeah, yeah. I know. Everybody.
Of course, if I have the black lab shipped on Tuesday, they'll get the original package on Wednesday... For all I know, the buyer is pulling a fast one on me; I have no way of knowing. So I'm assuming honesty. (Therein lies the difference between me and Kenneth L. Myers.)
But none of this is why I'm depressed.
I decided to start doing my bills this evening. Step one is always to reconcile my bank accounts (I maintain two) and write down all my deposits.
So I looked at my first bank statement and there was the deposit from Amazon. $7.55.
Now, I KNOW I've been working harder than that! I mean, maybe not as hard as I oughta, but certainly harder than $7.55 worth!
Knowing that in my quest to find $100 200 times I had managed to come up with only $7.55 clouded the rest of my bill-doing chore, which I actually managed to get through.
Here's the big picture:
Last month, my credit card debt totaled $22,474.70.
This month, it totals $21,517.77.
I should be excited!! It dropped almost a thousand dollars! And that was largely because I was THRIFTY. Well, that and the $7.55. As my loyal reader may realize (yes, that's singular because only one person asked me for a free bar of soap!), it is a huge accomplishment for me to drop from the $22,000s to the $21,000, unprecedented even, particularly since all my hard work only yielded $7.55. But I just couldn't get excited about it... Maybe tomorrow.
I just checked on Amazon. My “account” has a credit of $160.19. It will deposit into my bank account on July 7th. So that's the problem.
I think my next big goal will be to do whatever it takes to get that $600 back from my insurance company. Well, I can at least try. Despite the fact that I'm an attorney, I've never really gotten anywhere with them. Generally, they pay me whatever they decide to pay me, and if I have a problem with that, well, they already paid me whatever they decided to me, so they're done!
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Happy Third of July!
Cathy is really enjoying her Lego Harry Potter Wii game, which is a good thing. I can't tell you the number of times she waited desperately for a new Wii or DS game, only to get discouraged or disappointed within the first day or two. But I do get the feeling that she's zipping through the game a bit too quickly. Kinda makes me start thinking "Gameflix".The 3rd of July. It's almost time for the old reckoning again. Just as soon as I get around to doing my bills. Not today. Today was my annual “make potato salad today because the Fourth of July is tomorrow” day. And tomorrow, prior to the potato salad, Cathy and I plan to finally watch Toy Story 3. Then home to the vegan potato salad, which turned out surprisingly well, all things considered.
A couple of days ago I went out to the garage and started digging through our old Playmobil sets. I pulled out two Viking sets, both of which were missing two or three minor pieces. Naturally. The Viking ship is selling for $300 on Amazon. New. That is, if anybody's interested in buying it. Sometimes the prices that sellers slap on their items are really ridiculous. (Over on eBay, someone sold a used Viking ship for $14.95.) So I listed ours for $80 for both sets. I started my description by writing “PLEASE READ the entire description of my item...” so I wouldn't have a repeat of the Kenneth L. Myers episode.
And, believe me, if anybody buys the Viking sets, I'll be in e-mail contact to make sure they “get it” before I ship it... $80 is a bargain. After Amazon's commission and staggering shipping, I'll be lucky to clear $50. Actually, that would be cool! Especially for a used toy that no one ever really played with. That particular purchase fell into the category of “buying boy toys for my girls”. Yeah, that worked. Not.
I also dug out two Playmobil adventure sets, but Cathy took a good look at all the animals in them and promptly pronounced these toys we've had for years that she didn't even remember to be indispensable.
Oh, and the woman who bought the Webkinz black lab informed me two days ago that it had yet to arrive. Sigh. That's another problem with this form of selling. The sale may be final, but the work may not be.
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