Footprints on the Moon

I haven’t felt like this in awhile. This panicked, what the heck am I going to do, feeling about money has been mostly gone since I started making progress on all of my debts. I sat down today to evaluate everything, though, and that feeling is back full force.

I’m looking at losing a decent portion of my paycheck going forward. The overtime has dried up at work, and in case you’re confused as to why this might be such a big problem, I’ve been pulling in 7 hours of overtime per week for the last 3 years. 7 hours isn’t a whole lot, but it adds up. I’ve got one more paycheck with 8 hours of overtime on it (opposed to the 14 from before), and then it’s just 40 hours of straight time after that.

I don’t know exactly what my paycheck is going to look like then, but I have a pretty good idea where it will be at and I’m freaking out. I’m looking at going back to barely making the minimum payments on everything instead of having several hundred extra dollars per month to pay down my accounts. It is scary and I’m thinking it might be time to look at additional part-time admin jobs, or anything really, to supplement my current income.

All I know is I am freaking out. I’ll update my account totals some other time. Just know that I’m not making much progress, but am slowly but surely still headed in the right direction.

As 2008 rolled into 2009, I sat down and thought about what I hoped to accomplish with my finances this year. “Get out of debt” just didn’t seem to do it for me, so I sat down and lined up four more specific goals to focus on. So how did I do?

1. Pay off my car — DONE! I have been driving a fully paid off vehicle since January 16, 2009!

2. Put money back in my emergency fund — I had a goal of $500. This is both DONE and NOT DONE. I met my $500 goal fairly easily, and fairly early on in the year. But then I raided it to pay on a credit card. I know, I know, this is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do, but the credit card issuer made me angry and I was eager to get it paid off as quickly as possible. The fund currently holds around $100.

3. Save money for Christmas in cash– Also DONE and NOT DONE. Same reason as above, I raided this account to help make the final payments on my card. However, I did end using entirely cash for Christmas. Not a present was financed, so I count this one as a success even if it wasn’t to the letter of how I originally thought it would be.

4. Pay off WaMu Credit Card– DONE, DONE, DONE! Woohoo! Of course, they closed the account on me just before I managed to pay it off entirely, dinging my credit (damage of about THIRTY points to my FICO score ), but this credit card and its debt was going to be out of my life forever anyways!

As far as 2010 goals go… more of the above! Just exchange “Capital One” for “WaMu” in Goal #4! I hope to be more successful in the area of leaving my savings alone! I just find it too tempting when I’m within striking distance of paying something off, and that amount of money is just sitting in savings. Hmm… earn 1% interest, or pay off a debt at 20% interest! I realize that’s not the point of my emergency fund, but I just can’t help it!

So yes, leaving my savings alone… paying off my Capital One credit card… and paying back my Grandma the $250 I owe her. Here’s hoping for a great financial year in 2010!

I was going to wait until the beginning of the year when everything settles down to update again, but I pulled the numbers for my own information, and figured I might as well share. As you can see, not much progress, but at least it’s all still headed down. I’ve done nothing but make minimum payments the last two months as my focus has been elsewhere. Namely, Christmas, my car insurance and registration. I paid my registration online on Friday, and wrote the insurance check last Friday. If that’s not painful enough to make you look for cheap insurance, I don’t know what is!

As far as Christmas goes, I’m nearly done. I have a small gift that I’d like to buy for my niece, and then my dad’s present. That’s all, and I’ll be set there. I have a couple of short paychecks coming between taking an unpaid day for Jason’s funeral and the holidays, but hopefully I’ll be ready to get back on the debt repayment plan soon. I’m ready to be able to make more progress again!

The numbers probably don’t look as low as they should since I missed a monthly update, but I haven’t yet made this month’s payments to these accounts. Capital One went the wrong direction because that’s the card I used to pay to check my baggage while I was traveling last weekend. I think I also charged one meal to that card while in Orlando. I get paid tomorrow though, so I’ll be able to make my monthly payment + the extra and get that card moving back in the direction it is supposed to be going.

As you can see, I did in fact get the Chase card paid off in August. Woohoo! I haven’t yet been able to snowball the money I’d been paying towards that card though. In fact, I probably won’t be doing that until at least January. First, I used the money I freed up to buy some Christmas presents, and then to finance my trip to Florida. I have a lot of things that require money between now and the end of the year (such as the rest of the Christmas presents, car insurance, and the registration for my car) so it is unlikely I’ll be doing anything more than making minimum payments. I need to sit down and map out a budget for the next few months to make sure I can pay for the things that I need to, and finish buying Christmas presents without tapping into any of my credit. It will probably be rather tight (I spent too much money in the week before I left for Florida), but I should be able to make it work.

Assuming I quit buying things for my iPhone since it already upped my cell phone payment by $30/month. Oh… did I forget to mention that I bought an iPhone and it’s expensive data plan while I’m still not out of debt? Hmm… must have been an oversight on my part. I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

I almost forgot to share what I saw at Walmart on Friday when I went to spend all my money!! It’s about as useful as me trying to find a orange nj dentist when I live in Indiana… The picture is rather self-explanatory:

And what makes it even better?? This is in the aisle straight out from the entrance. A.K.A. the most popular place in to park in the whole lot.

What exactly is the point? Are they partying? Going on strike? Playing a prank on the Walmart employees?

I got some funny looks when I got my camera out and went over to take a picture of all these cart returns congregating together, but I couldn’t resist– I had to share with you guys!

I know I intended to move my financial stuff to a separate blog back in January, but it turns out, I’m not as motivated to write an entire money blog as I originally thought I would be. For awhile there, it was THE thing to do to separate every topic you wrote about and make separate blogs. Except then I felt so spread thin that I spent no time on any blog, and that’s just not useful! They’ve all died a painful death, so now I am stating my intent to bring everything back here.

BUT the purpose of this particular post is my July Financial Update. As you can see, I made some big progress this month! My Chase card is the debt I have been focusing on, and it will likely be paid off when I get paid next, on August 14th. It stands at $535 right now, with a pending payment of $300 that should post on Thursday. When I get paid next week, I’ll make the final $235 payment. There will likely be a small interest charge from the balance this month, but after that I’ll be free of that credit card forever!

And I have to laugh… as soon as I got within striking distance of paying off that credit card, Chase got ticked that they’re not making money off me anymore, and closed my card. They gave me several reasons, but I firmly believe they are bogus (i.e. those reasons have been true since the day they (well, WaMu) GAVE me the card several years ago). The only reason they closed my card is because it’s apparent that I am paying it off, and they won’t be making money off me anymore.

I’m not too upset because it’s not my oldest card, and I never intended to keep it anyway. But I’m still not happy about the ding it will cause on my credit report. Not only is it a closed account, it removes a $3,000 buffer in my credit/debt ratio. I don’t plan on applying for credit anywhere until it’s time to apply for a mortgage though, so hopefully my credit score will have time to recover before then.

Now that I’m so close to paying off the first card, I’m starting to think about where to focus next. It will likely be the Capital One card because it has the next highest interest rate out of the list. Another option, though, is paying off my laptop, which is not represented in the table above. It has the lowest interest rate, and a no interest deal for a few more months, but it’s also a Chase card, and I’m not the happiest Chase customer these days. The interest rate will probably win out over the company though, unless they do something else to screw me over!

As I always do at the beginning of a new month, I sat down yesterday and totaled up all of my debts to get a picture of where I’m at and how I’m doing. I was excited to realize– the credit card portion of my debt is officially under ten thousand! Woohoo!! I may even be able to get it under the 9,000 mark by the end of this month if I can “find” some extra money. I probably won’t quite get there, but it will be close.

Even if I don’t get to the 9k mark, the Chase card that I’m currently focusing on will be under one thousand as soon as I get paid tomorrow. That’s exciting! Still, I have a long way to go yet. Working over my budget for the next few months, it’s certainly clear that I won’t be affording one of those teeny little netbooks any time soon. Actually, I’m thinking I might not even be able to go to the conference in Florida this fall, even with the free conference ticket. Every time I try to figure out where to pull the money for a plane ticket and a hotel room, my poor budget cries. I’ll be disappointed if I can’t go, but it won’t be the end of the world. With the economy and the job market, I think paying off as much debt as possible has to be my first priority.

*sigh* Sometimes being a responsible adult sucks.

That’s what I’ve been doing this week… pouring over my budget and trying to figure out how it’s all going to work. And wishing I’d been able to pull off a debt consolidation last summer when I was trying to make that work. Maybe then I’d feel a little less pinched.

See, I’d worked out my budget for the next couple of months with one goal in mind: Pay off the laptop, and pay down as much as possible on my Chase credit card. Then I won a ticket to a conference this fall that I had wanted to go to, but decided I couldn’t afford. The price of the conference on top of the flight and the hotel just put it out of reach. But then! I won this ticket, and now all I have to cover is the flight and hotel… and figure out where the money is going to come from. And how much I’m willing to sacrifice all of the progress on my credit cards that I’d projected for the next couple months.

I know it will all work out, but man. Working and reworking the numbers sure does stress me out. I’ll be far less stressed as soon as I get a plan on paper.

Man, it sure seems like all the interest rates are heading in the wrong direction! My credit card interest rates keep creeping up through no fault of my own, and the interest rates on my savings accounts are dropping like rocks. When I signed up with ING, they had a 3.0% interest rate, and they’re now at 1.65%. Recently, I decided to sign up for an account with FNBO Direct who was advertising a rate of 2.60%. By the time my account was fully opened, it was at 2.40 (sorry to all the current customers, the rate drop is clearly my fault!). I hadn’t planned on chasing a good interest rate, but with the way things are going, today I withdrew my car insurance money from the ING account and will send it over to FNBO to wait until that bill is due. I try not to spend a lot of time worrying about the economy because all I can do is all I can do, you know? But I still can’t help but wonder where it stops…

So I *finally* got my W-2 on Monday… I know, they don’t have to have them mailed out until January 31st, but I’m impatient. I wanted to know exactly how much I’d be getting back so I could make plans. Besides, the earlier you get your tax return in, the faster you get your refund! I filed my taxes this week (still have to mail in my state return, thanks to a processing error), and I’m expecting a decent chunk of change back. Now I just have to decide what I’m going to do with the money! Buying New York Yankees tickets is not on my list, but I do have a few other ideas…

First I thought I’d buy a treadmillbecause I’ve wanted one for a long time…

Then I thought, well, I could take that money and use it for an upgrade– I could buy the camera I’ve had my eye on for agesand I really liked that idea…

But then I thought about the conference I wanted to attend this fall, but couldn’t afford. I could use my tax refund to pay for my conference ticket, airfare, hotel and extra expenditures.

Or I could be really boring and put the money in savings or onto one of my credit cards. Mark this one in the “what I SHOULD be doing with the money” column. Realistically, I’m leaning toward options 2 or 3… or both, but I’m having a hard time deciding.