I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘snowflake’ Category

Today I transferred a $2 survey payment from my savings to my checking, and deposited a check I just got for $10 from MySurvey (email me at paidtwice at gmail dot com if you want a referral and get 150 points btw, 1000 points equals $10), so when I got home I made a $12 snowflake payment to my Capital One card. Almost done with that card, within the next week or so I should be initiating the balance transfer to the 0% Citicard offer (after my statement date of the 30th on the new card) and hopefully that ends my paying interest to a credit card company. Whew. I better get my $50 Target gift card after all this hassle! I oh so love Target. What I will do to be able to shop guilt-free at Target.

That brings my total snowflakes this month to $49.34. It breaks down into:

~$12 from surveys

~$6.44 from craigslist

~$23.62 from selling textbooks

~$7.28 penances for grocery impulse buys

I am very behind my goal of creating $100 in alternative income a month to apply to debt. So far, just $42.06 and August is close to over. I do have a few things listed on craigslist but I haven’t gotten any interest in those yet. I need to buckle down and list what I have left for craigslist plus relist a number of things I didn’t sell the first time that have since expired off the listing page.

At least I have the yard sale planned for September. I’ve got a lot of ground to make up. Persistence! Focus! Stop procrastination! Okay then….

~J

I just got the check for my deductible in the mail from when a truck hit my parked car in a parking lot!  Yay!  I got my $250 back!  I knew I would get the whole deductible (I wasn’t even in the car when it happened) but I didn’t know how long it would take.  It took… a while.  But whatever.  Yay!

This changes a few things.  I took that money out of my emergency fund to pay my deductible, so it is going back into my emergency fund.  This brings the emergency fund total to $900.  So, my $216.57 surplus from last month, I only need $100 of it to get my emergency fund up to $1000!  So the remaining $116.57 will be snowflaked to Capital One on Friday, over and above my minimum payment and any other snowflake earnings I have this month.  YAY!  This is so exciting!  I feel like I am making some real progress now.

Now the hard part will be waiting until Friday when my spouse gets his first August paycheck to get the ball rolling .

~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

I think my lack of motivation extends beyond Craigslist and really is just a general lull kind of feeling in regards to my finances and making any noticeable progress.  I almost forgot to even check to see if the paypal transfer had posted yet so I could do this snowflake.  And a month ago I would have been checking 5 times a day.

The honeymoon is over!  Heh.

I was really motivated and excited for a while, and right now I just feel blah.   The reality of everything is setting in.  This is a whole lot of debt and it is going to take a good long time to make any real headway on it.  At first I was so excited because December 2010 just sounded SO much sooner than I ever hoped we could be out of debt by.  But now it seems like eons away.  We *are* making progress, good progress, but it feels really slow right now I guess.  And there are so many days of downtime where progress isn’t really happening interspersed with little flurries of activity.

I’m so moody.

I need to start appreciating each day in and of itself for what it is.  Find the little milestones and progress markers in each individual day.  Maybe one day I didn’t spend any money at all.  Maybe one day I sold something to make a snowflake with or got a check for taking online surveys.  Maybe one day I just did a little better with something financial than I expected to.

Little things.  Little things.

I’ve got a long way to go and I can’t wish away every day there isn’t any active progress to be made or I’ll miss too much of the life going on around me.   I need to learn to appreciate all the little baby steps and each moment of the journey.  I also need to set some more goals and keep myself accountable and find those goals that will create motivation in myself.  Now if I just knew what those goals were….

Eliminate credit card debt by December 2008.  That’s closer at least.  But that’s a stretch from the original plan so I’ll have to find ways to make even more progress than I have been.  A challenge… that’ll either work or make me even more cranky.

I’ll adjust for the cranky if necessary. 

~J

I sent the $55.54 snowflake to Capital One this afternoon, and I noticed my balance had gone up from the last time I checked.  This is about the time they post the interest for the past month and send out the new statements, so I clicked over to see my new statement.  And there isn’t one posted!  Bah.  But it does show on the make a payment page my new minimum payment this month ($117, it keeps going down faster and faster, was $123 last month) and no new charges to the account so the increase in balance must be the interest for the past month.

Which is without me doing the exact math, about $54.  Just about the same amount I just snowflaked.  Well, at least I just paid all last month’s interest basically and can start thinking about principal again .  And next month that interest will just be a smidgen lower due to calling them today (and all the money I plan to throw at the debt between now and then).  :cheer:

~J