Money and Bank of America update

We received our Federal tax refund yesterday. I immediately transferred $4,500 over to our BoA card and $1,000 to our ER savings!

Take that BoA!! Hubby still has to call our other two cards to get the remaining balance transferred over.

When we had the horrible conversation with BoA and they cut our limit, DH kept asking to speak to a supervisor. They said there was not one available and someone would contact us in a few days. We never got a call. But, we did get a letter in the mail saying they were trying to contact us and gave us a number to call. So, he did. And guess what? There wasn't a supervisor available. So, we left another message. Someone did finally call and leave a VM, but DH hasn't had time to call back.
When he does and they see that recent payment, maybe they will take us seriously, but I doubt it.
I also still haven't wrote the letter. I need to get on that.

Anyways, I updated our progress bars! They are looking nice!

And we are getting new toilets next weekend! I'm trying to be very excited about that :)
It's not a new couch, but I guess I still get to sit on it, right?

It was really depressing to see a $5,500 deposit in our account yesterday and just watch it go away without having anything to show for it. (except for new toilets) If we were out of debt I could have saved half of it, bought the toilets, a new washer/dryer and a new couch! THAT would have been awesome................ahhh.........someday. Right?

Suze Orman, BoA, and savings.

Her new advice includes paying the minimum on your credit cards and socking some into a savings account. At first I didn't listen.

After reading a bit about this, and after Bank of America lowered our credit limit..........I started thinking.

We do have four savings accounts.
Travel, which is at zero.
ER, which is low
Mine, which is supposed to be at 1,000. But we've been using it for unexpected things.
DH's, which is used for yearly expenses such as car tags and birthday gifts.

If you notice, I've added a new side bar. It includes the balance on my credit cards and their limits. And how far I am to paying them down.
I also show a few savings accounts, I choose not to track DH's because it's more like a checking account that we only use every few months.

I've always felt like our small 1,000 savings would be good for us, and if anything really bad happened, we could use our credit cards..............
but not anymore! We're losing our credit, so we can't rely on having it there if we need it.

We're going to listen to Suze. On my credit cards with the lower balances, I'm going to pay the minimum due.........and put the extra that I planned to pay into our savings account. I have a new goal. I will still have the $1,000, but we're going to up our ING account to $5,000. After we reach our $5,000 we will figure 6 months expenses and put that as our new goal. But, the money we put into it will decrease, because at that point, we will start aggressively paying down our credit cards again.

We're also going to start adding to our travel fund. We have a trip to Cabo in July, but it is already paid for. In 2010 we are planning a long weekend somewhere in the US. Probably within driving distance. In 2011, we are going to Hawaii.

You see the BoA one over there? Since they lowered our limit we owe 98%. That card is getting zeroed out by May. We are getting a tax refund of $5,500. 1,000 will go to our new savings goal, and $4,000 will go to BoA card. We will also take some money out of DH's savings, transfer some with a zero percent offer to Chase, and some to Sears for a 3% offer. BoA will not get another penny of our interest.

The rest of the tax refund is going towards new toilets. We had to call a plumber in because our kitchen sink clogged up. We tried everything, but couldn't fix it ourselves. While he was here we had him look at our toilet, because it has been clogging quit a bit lately. He also looked at the other one. Both need to be replaced.

Bank of America credit card conversation

Warning: I'm not too happy right now and there may be some not so nice language in this post.

Wow! So, we have taken the advice of calling our high interest credit cards and asking for a rate reduction.

This woman (a supervisor) will not reduce the interest rate.

What she IS going to do is lower our credit limit. This sucks because it will raise our debt ratio, and in turn lower our credit rating. She says this will help. DH is trying to tell her it won't. She won't listen. We're trying to get someone above her and she is saying she is the top. Bullshit. DH is being really good, calm, persistent, and knowledgeable.

We have been good customers. We have a high balance, they've been making around $200 per month in interest from us, and we want something in return. Instead they fuck us again. Now it's time to take our business elsewhere. The interest rate is 23.99%. Screw that.

Good thing we have a 0% transfer offer. We will be transferring our Bank of America balance to another card and never using them again.

We won't be closing the account, because that could hurt our credit rating, but we will never use it again (other than the occasional tank of gas that gets paid immediately).

edited to add:

Our current balance with this card is $8,762.50
Our current limit is $14,700.00

We owe appx. 60%

She is cutting our limit to the amount we currently owe, hence making us owe 100%.

We are done with Bank of America.

Full Disclosure: Credit Card Debt

Here we go:

I'm going to list each credit card, the balance a year ago, the balance today, and the interest paid and the rate.

Credit Card..... 120/30/07 .... 11/30/08....... Interest......... Rate
Wells......... $7,152.87....... $ 5,887.66....... $1,072.54 ....13.9%
Chase ........ $14,962.23 .....$11,066.55 ......$1,991.12 .....14.51%
BOA .......... $13,528.08 ..... $10,437.62 ....$2,364.24 .... 24.99%
1st Horizon.. $1,8890.93 ......$1,482.59 ......$199.17....... 11.99%
Lawyer .......... $1,438.54......... $ 0.00 ........ $183.40
DH Sears........ $1,867.85 .........$ 0.00......... $237.60
My Sears......... $915.11.......... $ 0.00 ......... $94.02
Home Depot ... $714.73.......... $ 0.00 ........$ 0.00........... 0%
Medical bills ...$2,000 appx.....$ 0.00 ..........unsure....... unsure

There it all is.
The 2 sears cards had the highest interest rate, so we paid those off first.
Home Depot was a no payment, no interest deal, so we paid that off right before the deal was over.
We could easily pay off the 1st Horizon in a few months, but it is our lowest interest rate, so we are paying $25 above the minimum due every month.
Wells is the second lowest interest rate, we pay $150 per month, about $30 above the min. due.
Chase and BOA used to be close in interest rate and in balance...........we were splitting the payments on them, much higher than is due.
Then BOA jacked our interest rate up, for no specific reason. So, we are paying about $50 above minimum for Chase, and aggressively trying to get the BOA paid off.

We want to pay less in interest over this whole deal, which is why we choose to pay the higher cards first. Most people decide to pay the smaller balance cards off first. But they end up paying more in interest.

My lawyer was on a payment plan of $50 per paycheck. I chose not to pay extra on that because it did not show up on my credit report. So, it wasn't affecting my credit score.

Our total balance owed last year: $44,470.34
Our total balance right now: $28,874.42
Interest paid: $ 6,142.08

Total Paid this year: $ 15,595.92

Wow! It just amazes me 1) how dumb we were and 2) how great we've done this month 3) what we could be doing with that money if we didn't have the debt!!! I mean seriously! We paid over $15,000! I could have a very nice savings account, furniture downstairs, a new washer and dryer, and both kids in private school (instead of just one). And we could have had a family vacation this year.

Our goal is to have the rest paid off by this time next year, but I don't know if that is going to happen. We will definitely have it all paid off within 1 1/2 years.

What am I going to do?

I'm done with classes until January. That means I have at least 3 weeks, maybe more, of............time? I don't know what that is like! I'm always over booking myself. I usually have 2 jobs, or a ton of volunteer stuff, or school....something that takes all my time.

During my break from summer to fall classes I painted my daughter room.

I was told that I could not do any projects during this break. I'm already caught up on reading all the blogs in my google reader. I've paid bills and balanced all of our accounts. I've gone over our budget. I guess I could do a credit card update.

The living room needs another good cleaning, but I can't do that now because all the boyscout popcorn is in here. Have to wait for that to get delivered.

I did buy a new entertainment table for the TV we are putting downstairs and a new bookcase. I've run out of shelves for all my books! Got them pretty cheap at walmart yesterday. The bookcase was on sale for $27 and the TV stand was only $55. Nothing fancy, it's just there to serve a purpose.

We bought a new TV last week. It is a 42" LCD HDTV. We had no intention of this, but came across a GREAT deal. It was only $600. And I LOVE it!
The original plan of a new TV came about because Santa is giving us a Wii for Christmas. Well, there is no room in the living room to play a Wii, so it has to go downstairs in the sparse family room. We were going to buy a cheap TV to put down there. But, we could only find stuff for around $300-400. I did NOT want to spend that kind of money for a TV in the basement. Then we saw this deal. So, we have a new nice TV upstairs, and the old one goes downstairs.

But, we needed something to put the TV on, hence the new TV stand.

This Christmas has cost us more than expected. But we used cash for everything. DH did some extra side work this month. Normally that money goes to extra credit card payments, but instead went to our splurges for the month. Well, some of it did, we still have some left over for a cc payment.

It has been almost one year since we've used a credit card!!!!

It's times like this that I think about all the stuff we could do if we didn't have the credit card debt. We pay at least $1,000 per month to our cc's. If we didn't have that, we could be putting that money in savings for all kinds of things. A bigger emergency savings, a new washer/dryer, a new couch, both kids in a better school instead of just one, and vacations!

Someday we will be debt free. And by that I mean only a mortgage. I like being able to itemize my taxes. Cars will be paid for, student loans paid, lots of money in savings, and being able to travel. Someday.

Now, back to my original reason for this post. What am I going to do for the next few weeks?

I did get a new book in our Christmas book exchange for our bookclub. Definitely not something I would have picked for myself, but that's the point! It does look interesting. A Rare and Curious Gift. I will have that read by new years.

I also have a book, Find More Time that I should read while I have the time! Then maybe I can handle next semester better!

I should also go over my goals that I set for last year and see how they fared. And set new ones for next year.

I will do a debt post.

Do some deep cleaning in the house.

Take the Christmas tree down. I neglected this last year. The tree is obviously not real, and in the family room in the basement. I never go down there except for laundry, so the tree really wasn't an issue. But, it will come down this time.

I have so many pictures to post! Last time I tried it didn't work and I was so frustrated that I gave up. I will be more patient this time and get them up!

Research some other blogging sites besides Google. I get frustrated with this one too much.

Well, that all sounds like a good place to start!!

Oh, and if anyone knows where I can get a Wii Fit, for a decent price, let me know!!

Our Christmas budget

I thought I was doing great with our budget for Christmas. We budgeted $800. This is for our two kids, and 9 other adults. We are now at $986. Oops.

I forgot to put the presents to us from the kids, stocking stuffers and the grandparents when I did the budget.

We averaged $80/couple, $50/grandparent, $100/kid, $100 in family Santa gifts/stockings, and $300 for the big Santa gift. (we normally don't do a big Santa gift, but caved in this year)

Our big Santa gift this year is the Wii. We played it a few times at friends houses and loved it. The Wii fit is awesome!! I can't wait to play with it!

So, any money that DH gets from his side business this month will go to our Christmas oops, instead of towards the credit card bills.

What would you do with $10,000?

I'll tell you what I did with it over the last 6 months. Paid on credit cards. Since Christmas we have paid off 1/4 of our cc debt. While I am very proud of us.............I'm also pretty bummed about it. I mean seriously!! $10,000.00!!! I think of what I could have done with all that money, but couldn't because of our debt. It angers me.

I could have a very nice savings account, a new washer and dryer, and a new pool.

Instead, our savings account is skimpy, the washer and dryer may die any day, and we are tearing out our pool. (pictures of the pool to come soon)

As I have promised in the past, here is the amount of credit card debt that we owe.
In December it was $41,887.47
Since then we have been charged $3,895.44 in interest (ouch!)
Now our total is $31,888.02

If we can keep up the payments, we will be credit card debt free by December 2010!! But, it will be tricky because I have decided to go back to school for a second degree. So, my paychecks are a little smaller, but we are cutting back even more. Hopefully we can still meet that goal.

On top of paying all of that, I have this in savings (it will be gone in a few months)
$1,800 for house repairs (pics to come)
$2,400 for my daughters braces (her dad will pay the other half)
$2,500 for a new fence - and that's only the back end, can't believe the cost of that!!
and $600 for tutoring for my daughter
leaving us with $1,000 for an ER fund.

Not too bad! I refuse to charge anything! If we don't have the cash for it, we don't get it. I'm ashamed it took $41,000 in debt to finally grasp that concept, but better late than never.

This is the stupidest thing ever!

Ok, so I just opened up one of my credit card statements, the one with the lowest interest rate but the highest interest. We only pay the minimum amount due on this, because of the low interest rate. We pay the high interest rate cards more than the amount due.

Well, this card with 5.99%, just got raised to 16.97%!!!!! WTF!!

DH is on the phone with them and they are saying because we have so much other credit card debt and because we only pay them the minimum due, they raised our rate. How the hell does that help us?!?!?!

They are currently reviewing our account to see if they can go back to the old rate. Yeah right. Whatever. Fuck you.

Now I'm more than ever determined to pay this shit off. I can't believe we were so stupid in the first place to do all this. Last year at this time we owed $10,000. Now it's way more. In just one year. Most of it was the wedding. We should have saved up.

Anyone reading this, learn from the mistakes of others.........