Updates!
Cut back on my spending a lot. Goodbye Starbucks, hello Dunkin Donuts (I work early in the AM, I need my coffee dammit.) Eating out has been severely cut back. It's a once-a-week thing now instead of an every-single-night-after-work thing. I also called up ATT to b*tch about my rising bill. I was going to cancel my contract outright, but that would have cost me a pro-rated bill in addition to a hefty early cancellation fee. So instead, I haggled my bill down to just $104/month instead of the $215 they were raping my wallet for. No go with my cell phone, though. I'm already getting a 10% discount on it through my job and couldn't bring it down any lower than the $90/month I'm currently paying. What's worse, I'm only 5 months into a 2-year contract, and it would cost me a small fortune to cancel, buy a new handset, and switch to something like Simple Mobile.
Balances are steadily falling, but because I've been helping my mother out with her bills lately, my progress has... slowed by quite a bit.
But still, things are looking good. I'm currently at 51% utilization down from a high of 80% when I first began attacking this mountain of debt last month. I'll be at 39% mid-March. Lower, actually, if I can get a CLI here or there.
By summer, I'll have knocked off more than half of my CC debt load.
Slowly but surely.
@Stralem wrote:Updates!
Cut back on my spending a lot. Goodbye Starbucks, hello Dunkin Donuts (I work early in the AM, I need my coffee dammit.) Eating out has been severely cut back. It's a once-a-week thing now instead of an every-single-night-after-work thing. I also called up ATT to b*tch about my rising bill. I was going to cancel my contract outright, but that would have cost me a pro-rated bill in addition to a hefty early cancellation fee. So instead, I haggled my bill down to just $104/month instead of the $215 they were raping my wallet for. No go with my cell phone, though. I'm already getting a 10% discount on it through my job and couldn't bring it down any lower than the $90/month I'm currently paying. What's worse, I'm only 5 months into a 2-year contract, and it would cost me a small fortune to cancel, buy a new handset, and switch to something like Simple Mobile.
Balances are steadily falling, but because I've been helping my mother out with her bills lately, my progress has... slowed by quite a bit.
But still, things are looking good. I'm currently at 51% utilization down from a high of 80% when I first began attacking this mountain of debt last month. I'll be at 39% mid-March. Lower, actually, if I can get a CLI here or there.
By summer, I'll have knocked off more than half of my CC debt load.
Slowly but surely.
T-Mobile could be a good option...maybe.
Buying a bag of Dunkin' Donuts coffee and brewing it at home would be cheaper still. (I'm going to be buying a bag of coffee from the local roaster here and keeping it in the office. I'm spending $8 per day, $40 per week, $160 per month on coffee. Just plain, black coffee. I drink a lot of it.)
Yet, keep up the good work! Congrats on getting the AT&T bill cut in half! Does that qualify for a happy dance? I believe it does...
@Rhaeny wrote:Okay so I pulled all of my debt together and what I'm struggling on are two issues. I have lots of 0% interest accounts expiring in the June and July time frame. So I know I need to work on those first. The second thing is that I don't want to pay the minimum payment on any of my cards because I heard that for internal scoring, that it doesn't look good. Is that a myth or reality?
Secondly, I will pay at least $4K per month (including the minimum pmt) so I can have this paid off this year. Now the question is where to start. Hmmmm???
Creditor Balance CL Utilization APR% Notes Min pmt NavVisa $14,691.27 $22,000.00 67% 12.65% 150 NavCheck $11,743.82 $15,000.00 78% 15.90% 238 DCU $ 5,014.65 $ 7,500.00 67% 9.50% 88 Chase $ 2,551.60 $ 5,000.00 51% 22.99% 0% thru July 150 Walmart $ 2,102.67 $ 3,300.00 64% 22.99% 0% thru Dec 45 Sears $ 1,754.51 $ 2,000.00 88% 22.99% 0% thru July 29 JCP $ 1,575.99 $ 4,500.00 35% 26.99% 55 Barclay $ 350.00 $ 3,300.00 11% 22.99% 0% thru June 20 Amazon $ 339.45 $ 2,300.00 15% 25.99% 0% thru June 25
Any advice appreciated. Thanks!
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, I am just a "numbers guy".. all of my advice is "what I would do" and by no means constitutes the ONLY way of doing this.
Hmm, let me look at this a minute:
I personally do not like to just pay the minimum. It is easier on math, but for internal, I like to pay 3X the minimum, therefore proving to the lender that you are capable of more CL then they currently have given you.
You are paying interest on some stuff that will cost you more then letting the 0% expire a bit, let me spend some time on this and I will have a plan for you based on what I would do later tonight...
Edited to add: (ETA).. Titanfold is quick on the responses today, lol, he sees the same thing I do 
OFFICIAL GARDEN START DATE: 10-05-2014... TARGET GARDEN END DATE: 06-01-2016 Lets Git 'r' dun
@Pupeitmeister wrote:
@Rhaeny wrote:Okay so I pulled all of my debt together and what I'm struggling on are two issues. I have lots of 0% interest accounts expiring in the June and July time frame. So I know I need to work on those first. The second thing is that I don't want to pay the minimum payment on any of my cards because I heard that for internal scoring, that it doesn't look good. Is that a myth or reality?
Secondly, I will pay at least $4K per month (including the minimum pmt) so I can have this paid off this year. Now the question is where to start. Hmmmm???
Creditor Balance CL Utilization APR% Notes Min pmt NavVisa $14,691.27 $22,000.00 67% 12.65% 150 NavCheck $11,743.82 $15,000.00 78% 15.90% 238 DCU $ 5,014.65 $ 7,500.00 67% 9.50% 88 Chase $ 2,551.60 $ 5,000.00 51% 22.99% 0% thru July 150 Walmart $ 2,102.67 $ 3,300.00 64% 22.99% 0% thru Dec 45 Sears $ 1,754.51 $ 2,000.00 88% 22.99% 0% thru July 29 JCP $ 1,575.99 $ 4,500.00 35% 26.99% 55 Barclay $ 350.00 $ 3,300.00 11% 22.99% 0% thru June 20 Amazon $ 339.45 $ 2,300.00 15% 25.99% 0% thru June 25
Any advice appreciated. Thanks!
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, I am just a "numbers guy".. all of my advice is "what I would do" and by no means constitutes the ONLY way of doing this.
Hmm, let me look at this a minute:
I personally do not like to just pay the minimum. It is easier on math, but for internal, I like to pay 3X the minimum, therefore proving to the lender that you are capable of more CL then they currently have given you.
You are paying interest on some stuff that will cost you more then letting the 0% expire a bit, let me spend some time on this and I will have a plan for you based on what I would do later tonight...
Edited to add: (ETA).. Titanfold is quick on the responses today, lol, he sees the same thing I do
Great point that I hadn't even thought of! I was solely going to concentrate on getting the 0% paid off the quickest. So I'll wait for your reply to see what my options are. Thank you!