I'm Up Late

I determined to figure out our finances and if I had to stay up late, that was what I'd have to do.

It helps that I had a three and a half hour nap today!

I'm chagrined to see that from July to now we have only whittled down our credit card debt by only $58.52. It doesn't help that finance charges were around $150 for the month! ACK! And dh has been working on his business and has bought materials for the current job from our own money.

We are only using debit cards now.

One credit card is in use for automatic bill pay purposes. Right around $400 in bills goes onto this card each month and my automatic payment was set to $310. $180 of those bills belong to my sister, who regularly has me floating her for 60-90 days. I finally broke down and started charging her the interest that I have to pay. When she pays, I pay the total amount she paid, toward this card, so not only am I paying the amount being charged each month plus interest (her bills and ours) but her amount goes there, too. I've just increased our automatic payment to $450 per month. This credit card has the lowest interest fee at 9.50%. I know that is still quite high and I am sure I can do much, much better. I just need to take the time to look at one of the credit card offers that come in the mail that offer 0% for one year. There is still a transfer fee that has to paid. I believe it is a percentage and maximum of $75.00.

I have a minimum automatic payment set up for the other credit card, plus I am paying bigger chunks at the end of the month when I see how much money we have left. I REALLY need to get this one transferred someplace else as the interest fee is 15%. OUCH!

On the lower interest card, it looks like I have a Balance Transfer option at .99%.

I will look into this. After I pay the bigger interest card down by another $1000, we would have enough room on the lower interest card to max it out, leaving us with one credit card account to manage.

The less accounts to manage, the better.

Dh is gearing up to get his business started again. This time we are looking into what he needs to do to make it a "real" business. With business cards, a business license, a business checking account even.

We'll see.

Until next time.