Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Back to work today. And I've gotten a lot of stuff done.

Already paid one credit card payment this morning as I noticed when reviewing the statement it said I was one payment behind. I'm quite certain I wasn't, but further review showed that I failed to make the MINIMUM payment (by $10), therefore, they consider that delinquent. Nice. And a late fee of $35.00

So today, already, before 8am this morning, I spent $107.00 out of the credit cards $400 budget.  That leaves me with $293 to pay the others. Not a problem, but certainly do not see any real additional money being put towards the lowest balance one this month. FYI - the lowest balance card I have is $285.00 which means that this should be paid down in NO time at all with the next card being $587.00 (AE) or HSBC (BestBuy) $683.  As I sat there and got the balances, I went ahead and made a payment on AE for $25 and one on Best Buy for $45.

The remainder of the day was fairly simple, work, drive home and then discover that both kids were home this evening ... Hubby and I decided to take them to dinner as we've not done that yet, and the Boy will be leaving Thursday morning. Sweet Tomatoes it was since I had coupons. $43 out of pocket cash. I still need to get to the bank and withdraw the grocery and gas funds for the 2 weeks ($190).  We did go over our goal for dinner out but we also had 2 additional mouths to feed,  so I'm fine (real goal is $40, my goal is $30).

So day 3, not so bad ... just very upset by the stupidity of forgetting to double and triple check the minimum payment due ... live and learn.

Reviewing Credit Card Statements

In the past, I've not reviewed the credit card statements, nor have I even really looked. I mean, seriously, I get ONE in the mail, the rest are online.

PROBLEM #1 - Failure to review and confirm that the minimum payment really is the minimum payment creates issues. As in "LATE FEE" and "WARNING" on top of the statement.

Hello?? I need to call Capital One today ... I went online to get the balance to enter in the binder and notice that my minimum payment for January was $107.00. That's about $47 more than I had slated.

Because I was paying $50 two times a month for a while there ($100 total) I thought for sure the $50 was the minimum (and I had just been doubling up on it since for awhile it was the ONLY credit card I had) ... well gosh, was I WRONG. Minimum payment is and has always been $60.00.

So I will call today and see if I can't get the $35.00 late fee waived (I mean seriously, $35??) ... this is why I hate credit cards.

I know, I screwed up on it, I admit it ... but geesh.

Balance on the card? $2,600. Yikes.

Rule #1

It's November 7th, 2011.

And that leaves me 55 more days of pure, free spending days.

Anxiety? A little.

Excitement? Sort of.

I'm still making the rules as I go along.

It's hard to do that.  Arent' you suppose to have the rules of the game BEFORE you release it? Oh. I have 55 more days still.

Rule #1.

No credit cards or debit cards. Cash only.

Shouldn't be difficult. I used to be a fairly high cash only person before but then, the damn credit cards showed up. Yeah. Started out with good intentions and then look what happened? So many things that I discovered I just could NOT live without.

So there we are, 2 rules down, and a few more to go.