I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘plan’ Category

I just requested copies of all three of my credit reports and then persued them online and printed out copies.

I know, I should have done it a LONG time ago. The spouse requested his before we applied for a mortgage but I never got around to looking at mine.

Only two errors — one of the three bureaus has my birthdate a month off… how I have no idea. I will be mailing them a copy of my birth certificate to correct that one. The funny part about that is it makes my birthdate a day that doesn’t actually exist. You’d think they’d notice that. The other error I am still deciding if I want to bother correcting.

All three report my Capital One card as having a $0 credit limit. Um…. no. I’d have to look up the exact number but my limit is around $12,000. Now yes yes, this lowers my used/available ratio and negatively affects my credit score. But. I have two other credit cards with $0 balances, and one has an almost $50,000 limit. So my overall ratio of available to used is still rather good. And I am not planning on making any major purchases with credit anytime in the near future if ever, and if I do the Capital One card should be long paid off by then.

I’m trying to decide if it is even worth the time and effort to write letters disputing it. (I’ve since learned that this is a common practice Capital One used to do, so I couldn’t really have changed it even if I wanted to.)

Otherwise my reports are correct and look very nice and happy and pretty. I may be broke and in debt but I have an excellent credit history. Heh.

So, basically, I have spent a lot of time reading stuff online. There is a LOT out there. Blogs and message boards and websites, and I have read a ton and posted some to a debt support group message board to try and stay focused and motivated. Whoa.

I say whoa a lot lately.

Since the beginning of this year I’ve been focusing more on getting out of debt. We bought a house and I want a secure financial future for us and our kids. And I want to be able to DO things with the kids and not always feel so crunched in regards to money. Imagine a world where the $750 we pay in minimum payments was free to save and spend as we chose….

Whoa.

So, I started throwing money around. I started zapping little bits to the Capital One card whenever I felt I could. I love online banking. And that’s all fine and dandy. But now I want a plan.

So, the “plan”. Basically the “debt snowball” plan. I’d “fixed” my minimum payment on that card a long long time ago. Back when it was $199 I paid $200, and as the minimum payment has slowly crept down (currently $127) I have kept paying $200. Which meant I paid a little extra, or “snowflaked” a little extra, to it each month. I’ve become more aggressive about that, any time I get “found” money or I spend less for something else than I anticipate, I have been trying to throw it at the card. It has been working. The minimum is 2% so you can see I went from 10K+ to 6K now. But anyway.

I am focusing on highest interest to lowest interest. And I just hate the credit card the most. So, credit card first. If the plan works out I will actually pay both the credit card and the auto loan off in the same month, March 2009. then start aggressively paying down spouse’s student loan. I anticipate Sallie Mae and I having a lot of fights about that…. they resist paying extra towards principal. I will prevail though. If I have to save it all in a separate savings account and do the one time payoff, I will.

Anyway. Tomorrow or maybe tonight I open an ING savings account at 4.5% interest for the fabled $1000 “emergency fund”. Which becomes my son’s college savings fund. His future looks bright already

I’d say I was following Ramsey except I haven’t actually read Ramsey, I’ve just read blogs by followers of Ramsey. But I am doing the debt snowball. But not paying balances lowest to highest, I am all about the interest rate (and I hate the credit card most so it works motivationally for me to focus on it).

My goal is to pay $900 – $1000 each month towards debt reduction. At $1000 we would pay off by Dec 2010. $900 puts us mid 2011. We’ll see. I like to set goals I have to stretch for.

Make it this far? lol

Plan in summary: $900-1000 towards debt per month. All extra over minimums to ONE debt. Start with credit card. Then spouse student loan. Then my student loan.

then breathe.

~J

Welcome to my blog about getting out of debt. Current target: December 31st, 2010.