When I started this spreadsheet in January the minimums added up to $3920 (If I went back to November it would’ve been worse, but I don’t have complete records of that). Last month the minimums added up to $3177. That’s a difference of $743 per month. When I was trying to pay $3920, I was coming up short and having to go further in debt to pay for other needs like food and gas. There was also a lot of borrowing from one account to pay another. Needless to say there wasn’t anything extra to pay down the debts. That $743 dollar difference makes it a lot easier to pay cash for everything and apply extra payments toward debt.
The checks to pay off most of my credit cards arrived from my refinance company. They were made out in the amount I owed at the time they ran my credit report when I first applied for the loan. Since I had made payments on the accounts since then (and made a couple charges [...]
“Have you ever been late on your mortgage payment?” That was one of the first questions I was aked when I talked to the loan consultant about my refinance.
This conversation took place in early November and I still had not paid my October 15th payment. I had seen a copy of my credit report before [...]
I added up all my debts, how much the minimum payments were, and the amount of interest I was paying every month and when compared to my income, it looked very unlikely that I could even continue to make all the minimum payments. Obviously, I have to pay a lot more than the minimum due [...]
