After checking my balances on 6 (out of 8) cards, after plotting. planning and scheming which balances to transfer to where (chase offers 2.9 with no transaction fee, citibank offers 0% however withn a 3% fee, amex offers 5.9% no transaction fee, etc) I've come to AN ASTOUNDING MINDSHATTERING conclusion!!!!!! Mark LA's conclusion: drumroll please................ I can bt from today til tomorrow from here to Delaware and back - but - in the end - gulp - what I really gotta do is PAY OFF my balances as quickly as possible! (one big collective: DUH!) (it's a novel thought - i know - but i felt it had to be said - and I'm sayin it mainly to myself - because I need all the support i can get...... amazing, isn't it how and hundred bucks here - and seventy five dollars there - all of a sudden turn into thousands of dollars of debt - and i'm not talking about interest charges.....)
JUST DO IT! MarkLA I feel your pain! I argued with myself for 2 days before paying off the Juniper $446.90 balance, of which only $1.90 was interest. It would have been so easy to keep paying $15/month till the 1.9% goes away. But it's an awesome feeling to be CC-debt-free! Why pay another $1 in interest next month if I don't have to! Now I can add another layer to the meaing of independence day!
I paid off all my cards before summer, then I started charging all over again. It's just too easy to buy on credit, figuring you'll just pay it off later...then "later" gets here and you have no place to hide...ugghhh...but it does feel great to be debt free, even if it's just for a little while. Just try to remember all the rewards that come from managing your credit well. That's what gets me through the hot spots...I know how you feel. Calmest_LA
(sigh) thanks I have about 10K debt right now - and I'm some how managing to console myself with this dumb logic "well, it's only 17% of my total cl" but - it's still 10K debt. i've been forcing myself to use the cards less and pay back more - but it's tough. Thanks for the support.
Mark, I paid off about $13,000 in debt since last August. It feels wonderful!!!! I'm not quite down to ZERO yet but I'm working on it. When you have a plan (I use Quicken) it's amazing what you can do. Determination is the key. There was nothing I could have bought during that time which would have given me more pleasure than checking my balances each month and seeing them go down, down, down. I actually got a fix from it. I've had a few curves thrown my way with unexpected car and house maintance items that were absolutely necessary so my DEBT FREE date has been pushed back by a few months but just being this close is really a high. This month, I made one concession to my "no unnecessary purchases" rule but I have waited a year and in that time the price went down considerably. I just bought a notebook computer - just had to do it so I could check on all my accounts and log into CreditNet when I'm out of town (which is 50% of the time). I'm kinda mad at myself for not holding out on this purchase until I had all of my debt paid but it's done now and I am eagerly awaiting UPS. The way I look at it is that the interest I *would have* paid over the last year on debt I no longer have or at higher interest rates than the 3 promos I've used has actually paid for my purchase!
