I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘credit cards’ Category

My new billing cycle for my Capital One card started, and the updated numbers and my new statement posted.  I’ve made some progress!

My balance posted as $5478.40.  My balance is actually $5467.71, which is reflected on my “numbers” page, because I snowflaked $10.69 after the previous billing cycle ended that is not on my new statement.  For comparison, my balance at the beginning of last billing cycle was $5852.72.  So I’ve reduced the principle by $385.01 from the last statement to this one.

I made payments this billing cycle of $421.45, compared to $362.86 last cycle.  I am hoping to continue that upward trend.  Why not the same as what the principle was reduced by?  Because we move on to the…

Interest charges.  I accrued $47.63 in interest charges, compared to $53.98 last cycle.  This was lower for the obvious reason of my balance being lower, but also because I got my interest rate lowered from 10.9% to 9.9%.  Not a huge change but every little bit helps!

And last, but not least, my minimum payment dropped from $117 last cycle to $109 this cycle.  I don’t know why I like tracking that progress so much but I do.

Hopefully I will be transferring my balance within the next 7-10 days to the 0% offer and then I will just have to pay whatever interest accrues  between now and then and be done with credit card interest, hopefully for good.  Until then I will keep chipping away at it, the more I pay, the less I transfer and the less interest I ultimately pay.

~J

For those of you who want updates on the middle of the night wake-fest my daughter thinks is fun, 2 teeth appeared last night so we are hoping tonight may be the end of the 2-3am party.  We can hope.

On to the exciting financial news prompting middle-of-the-night posting.  Tonight I made my largest single payment to Capital One ever.  $323.01.  I made my spouse come look at the computer while putting in the online payment to share in my excitement.  He mostly said “Whoa.  I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”

This $323.01 breaks down into:

~my “standard” $200/month payment (the minimum I set for myself)

~$116.57 income surplus from July (total surplus was $216.57 but $100 of that needed to go to emergency fund to bring that total to $1000)

~$6.44 profit from craigslist sale I mailed to Florida after paypal and shipping fees.

This payment will push my payments for this billing cycle over the $400 mark.  The most I have ever paid in a single billing cycle.

This budgeting thing is doing wonders.

~J

There is plenty of talk around the blogosphere and in the general media about responsible credit card usage: use your credit card and pay it off in full every month so you get the convenience and benefits of credit card usage (like cashback rewards) but don’t pay any interest.

Simple. And smart if you do it right.

And then there is the credit card I just saw a commercial for. The Discover Motiva card. From their website:

With the new Discover Motiva Card, your good credit management earns you cash rewards. Just make 6 on-time payments in a row and we’ll pay you the next month’s interest back as a Pay-On-Time Bonus. That’s twice a year, every year when you pay on time every month!

So to earn this reward, basically, you have to carry a balance. That’s the reward Discover *wants* you to earn. Discover gets interest from you for 5 months, then you get basically an interest-free month in the form of a cash reward. Rinse and repeat. And this is called “good credit management” by the marketing peeps at Discover. I don’t see how this can be a good marketing strategy unless a lot of people aren’t using their credit cards responsibly and are carrying a balance month to month.

Maybe it should make me feel more normal that there are theoretically lots of people out there in the world carrying a credit card balance and this reward would presumably appeal to them. Enough to make a marketing campaign targeting them at least.  It doesn’t make me feel better about my credit card debt though, just kind of sad that there are people so comfortable carrying a balance on their credit card that they’d jump at an incentive for keeping that balance. I guess I am part of Discover’s target demographic. Hopefully not for much longer.

~J

You ever do something you thought was a great idea at the time, but the hassle made you rethink that decision over and over again?  I’m really starting to feel that way about this whole $50 gift card for using your new credit card operation.  Ugh.

The charge at Walmart from Saturday finally posted to my new credit card account this morning.  I logged in and tried to pay it online on the credit card’s site, which of course meant registering my bank account with them.  I chose this method because paying through their website means the payment will post the same day and I am a huge fan of instant gratification.

I get done registering my bank account, then the site tells me it will take 5 business days for the bank account to be approved so I cannot make a payment until August 15th!  The bill is not due until August 30th, so no worries there, but I had to add the credit card to my list of bills to be paid just so I make sure I won’t forget, and generally, it made me grumpy.  I didn’t want this one purchase thing to take up so much of my emotional energy, I just wanted to do it and be done with it.  I’m starting to think it was so not worth the $50 gift card.  But it is too late now so I must forge on.  I’m so itchy to do the balance transfer and be done with it, and now I need to wait even longer.  With all the extra time this whole thing is taking that I never accounted for, I may only be breaking even by the time the balance is transferred.  Lesson learned I guess – don’t bother with rewards when you are trying to stop the interest accruing insanity.

I did also earn 9 “Thank You” points (their reward program) for my purchase.  Must put “Check out Thank You Points program” on my to-do list.  Since I know I will be receiving 6000 Bonus “Thank You” points for my making my first purchase, and that is equal to a $50 gift card, it seems the “rewards” back are less than 1%.  Whoopee.  This won’t be a card I will be using to make purchases to get rewards once we’re not in debt if that remains the same, I can guarantee that.  Maybe it has a great airline rewards or something.  It seems like the card would need to have more competitive rewards to stay in the game.  Unless their only game is balance transfers.

~J

Since I just sold one of my craigslist items to one of those Florida people.

They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse (over the list price plus my on the high side shipping estimate) and paid instantly through paypal.  Once I determine the actual shipping when I send it tomorrow I’ll have a little snowflake for the credit card.  The item originally was only $5 so the snowflake won’t be much more than that but every penny (or dollar) counts.

Speaking of credit cards the Citi card still hasn’t posted my charge from this weekend so I can pay it…. how slow are credit cards anyway?  Hmph.

And to make this post completely random, speaking of snowflakes I did snowflake a penance for the extraneous grocery items after all.  Feels good to see that Capital One balance go down, even a little bit.

~J