AWOL and Balance Updates

I apologize for the lack of updates in the past few days but I’ve been out of town for business. I applied $1000 of the IRS stimulus rebate check to the balance on our CITI PremierPass Card. The good news! that balance is down to $6,461.81. The original plan was to apply it to CITI Professional card but I changed my mind at the last minute and decided this will help lower the interest charge next month on the highest balance. I don’t really follow any method for getting out of debt so this is OK. I know Dave Ramsey followers would never apply a debt payment to the highest balance, I say do whatever works best for getting out of debt.



As some of you might remember, the spouse and I currently have over 20 credit card accounts. This week I used my American Express Blue card for all my work expenses. Somehow other charges like shopping and entertainment went on that card. I believe I charged well over $700 over the last 4 days. I also used my Amex Corporate card for all my hotel expenses. The goal for June is to get these American Express accounts back to $0.00 and continue to reduce the CITI Premier Pass card. Best Buy and CITI Professional will have to wait until July or August for those balances to go down.

I hope to get rid of all this old credit card debt before this year is over. It would be nice to be able to use a credit card and pay the full balance due every month.

Let me know what you think, share some thoughts with me.

HS

April 2008 CITI Balance

The balance on our CITI Premier Pass card is now at $7,377.78. We made a payment for $1800 this month, we managed to find some extra money around the house and decided to apply it to this balance. I should be adding money to the emergency fund but I much rather see this balance go down. I truly hate paying interest.



The goal for May is to put the balance in the 6K range, hopefully we can be under $5,000 before July. I wish all this money was going to a mutual fund instead of CITI. I think we learned our lesson, never be in this much credit card debt again...

What were we thinking in the past??

HS

Your New Card

Did someone tell CITI that I destroyed my Professional cards? They just sent me new ones in the mail! I wonder if they been reading this blog.



Does anyone have any creative ideas to destroy these? I apologize for the quality of the pic, but it was taken with my cell phone.

Stop sending me credit cards!

HS

April 2008 CITI Balance

I received my April 2008 CITI statement, the finance charge for this month was $88.94. The good news is that the interest rate continues to drop, this month the rate is down to 11.240%. A year ago the interest rate on this card was 14.240%. Here are the details:



As you can see, we made payments for $2,00o dollars but only $1,911.06 was applied towards the balance. Our goal for April is to reduce the balance down to $8,177.78. I will continue making the minimum payments on all the other cards.

If you're thinking about using credit cards, look at my numbers above. Here is proof that credit is not worth using unless you can pay off the entire balance each month. Learn from me and don't pay interest.

HS

CITI Payment

It's official, the CITI Premier Card balance is now at $9,088.84:



Our goal for April is to reduce this amount by another $1000, the goal for May is $7,000. As soon as the balance is close to $5,000 I can look for balance transfer offers and stop paying interest.

HS

Balance Update March 2008

Balance update for March 2008:

Best Buy: $1,679.30
CITI Professional: $2,058.60
CITI Premier: $9,088.84

TOTAL: $12,826.74

Most of the progress this month went to CITI Premier Card. We paid the balance down by $2000 dollars! What a feeling, part of me feels like we could have saved $2000 and part of me knows that this is money we spent in the past and now is the time to pay it off.

April will not be an aggressive month, my wife has a trip for spring break with her friends so instead of adding to the debt I’m going to reduce the snowball by $500 and only pay $1000 to debts, most of it going to CITI Premier. I plan to make May an aggressive month and pay off CITI Professional using the government tax rebates. According to the IRS web site we should have the money in our account by May 9. It will be a great feeling to have two accounts remaining for pay off.

Thanks everyone for your comments and advice.

HS

CITI Professional

I went out last night and celebrated St. Patty's day, we had lots of green beer and great food. When the bill came I put it on my Professional card. What was I thinking? This morning I felt a little guilty so I decided to cut up my CITI Professional card, I will never use it again. This is what it looks like now:



It was only $79, not a lot of damage but I need to stop using credit in order to get out of debt!

I hope everyone had a great St. Patricks Day.

HS.

Progress on CITI!

The balance on my CITI card is now $10,088.84:



We are on track of meeting our goal of reducing this card by another $1000 this month.

I am also going to send $500 to my CITI Professional card.

I reduced my emergency fund to $600 to make all this happen.

I will post all the balances this coming weekend.

HS

March 2008 CITI Balance

We got a statement from CITI, here is the balance for March:



The balance went up by $105 dollars... I love interest!

The goal is to pay $2000 in March to this account. I've decided to ignore my Best Buy account for now and concentrate on both CITI cards this month. Next month I plan to pay off the furniture and keep the focus on CITI. I plan to pay off this balance ASAP so reducing this debt to $9088 will give me a lot of progress both financially and mentally. The ultimate goal is to have this account down to $8,100 by mid April.

Wish me luck...

Welcome Back

Hi, I’m back, I took a two month break from my blog and managed to add more debt. Something happened, I felt like my life needed a change so we managed to add more debt to the household. So here I am, I’m back to tell this blog about my debts. I removed most of the previous posts that had nothing to do with debt and instead I plant to focus on my debt and provide updates about repayment.

CITI was doing great until I decided that my living room needed new furniture and a brand new HDTV along with a surround system. I have no idea what got in to my head and how my wife approved but here is a breakdown of my new accounts:

CITI: $10,983
CITI Professional: $1,758 (don’t ask).
BEST BUY: $1,706.59
ROOMSTORE Furniture: $549.59

So, please join me once again as I attempt to pay off all this debt. The goal to be credit card debt free is November 2008.

January Update for CITI

I received the January statement from CITI, the balance went up by $128.78. I made a payment for $650 and we are making $1000 payment around January 20. That should put us close to be under $10,000 in February. We’ve decided not to have any budgets or anything for this year. The main goal is to pay off this balance. Any money we find is going to CITI.

CITI Details:

New Statement date 12/05:

Balance: $11,750

PURCHASES*FINANCE CHARGE*PERIODIC RATE Standard 128.78

My finance charges have gone down significantly! I pulled up a statement for August 2007 and the finance charge back then was a lot higher:

PURCHASES*FINANCE CHARGE*PERIODIC RATE Standard Purch 163.02

We are making progress but it’s not enough! I need to make more drastic sacrifices and pay off this balance.

My One And Only Goal For 2008

I see a lot of goals for the New Year on the blogs I read. I guess I have to to post my own. I don’t want to lose weight or make a million dollars or quit drinking, my only goal for 2008 is get rid of the CITI balance. I hate this balance, why in the world is my credit limit $17, 7800 dollars? I am too young to have a credit line that high. No one should have that much credit available to them on one card. I can purchase a car with this credit card!!! Someone should be fired at CITI!

For years It feels like I’ve been winning all the battles against credit cards, paying them on time, getting rewards, free travel, cash back etc. but it looks like CITI won the war. I pay around $140 on interest every month. That really hurts. I can’t continue to have this balance hanging around; it is time to pay this off. We came up with a simple plan, to pay $1000 dollars a month until it’s paid off. It could take 12 months but my goal is to never miss that payment amount.

So, again, my only goal for 2008 is to pay off $11,660.00 balance with CITI. Happy 2008 everyone! Come back and check on my progress next year and remind me how much I hate this card.

CITI Balance

The current balance in our CITI credit card is $11,787. We paid $800 dollars to this account in November. I am still not happy; we are not even under 10,000 yet. Patience is key, this is what I keep telling myself every day.

There’s been a lot of progress on this card, I looked up statements dating back to last April and we used to make huge payments on this account only to turn around and use the card again. Around April or May the balance was close to $14,980, our credit line is only $15,000, imagine how much of that interest I get charged, the rate is 14.40. We also had other credit cards so our total debt 8 months ago was probably close to $18,000.

For December we are planning on paying double the minimum payment so it will probably be around 400 dollars. I would like to add more cash to our emergency savings to avoid using credit cards in 2008. We also have to purchase Christmas gifts and my wife needs some money for her vacation the week before Christmas.

Our plan for 2008 is to make $1,500 dollar payments every month. Around June I plan on making one final payment and be done with this card, I am tire of CITI!