I’ve been hoping to move some high interest balances to an account with a 0% interest rate for a while now and the chance finally came.
I had one of my credit cards paid down to about $150 dollars and I submitted the payment to pay it off via their web site. I was about to log off when I saw a link that said “Click here to see what balance transfer offers you qualify for”.
I was then offered 0% on balance transfers for 12 months. There is a 3% transaction fee though so it will cost $97.50 to transfer $3250.00 into the account. The other account has a high interest rate (27.24%) and the finance charges for February alone were $75.72, so this offer will cause me to pay more fees the first month, but will save me money the other 11 months.
If the balance transfer is not paid off within 12 months, the balance begins being charged my standard purchase rate on the card. Currently that amount is 19.24%, so even then the move will be costing me less than before.
Inside one of my Netflix envelopes there was an advertisement for eMusic that offered Netflix users 35 free downloads with a 7 day trial. It looks like that offer is open to anyone! Click here to visit the eMusic site.
I’m a big fan of music and have a huge collection, but I haven’t bought much music since I decided to become debt-free. I was using the Rhapsody,com 
service before, but I cut that out when I was trimming unnecessary expenses out of my budget. The Rhapsody site is awesome as it lets you listen to unlimited music while you are a member. They have a free trial membership too and I liked it so much I stayed with them for a while.
I’m not ready for another monthly service yet, but I’m enjoying my week on emusic while I have it. I downloaded one entire CD that I’ve been wanting to buy and now I’m just searching for songs I haven’t got on CD or MP3; mainly stuff I bought on cassette or vinyl back in the old days.
If any readers can suggest other online sites that let you sample music, let me know. It doesn’t have to be downloads, streaming audio is good too!
I finally have an emergency fund of one thousand dollars set aside in a savings account. If you follow the advice of some financial gurus like Dave Ramsey, they often list the emergency fund as the first step to getting out of debt. It does make sense that if you have the emergency fund ready, you are less likely to have to borrow when you have some unexpected expense rear it’s ugly head.
I was so intent on getting our Care Credit account paid before the interest-free period expires that I decided to skip the emergency fund for a while.
I just got the best tax refund I’ve had in years and it’s enough to knock out the Care Credit and start the emergency fund.
We have never been good at saving money and I’m thinking we may be better off if the emergency fund is placed in another account other than the one we use everyday. I believe the expression “Out of sight, out of mind” might apply here.
I have read a lot about the ING online banking accounts and have applied for one. I’m waiting for them to verify my account right now and then I’ll use that to hold a portion of my emergency fund.
I started filing my taxes online in the year 2000 and have used the Turbotax web site every year to submit them. Their service worked very well, so when I started receiving my tax-related paperwork (W2 forms, 1098 forms), I went to the TurboTax site and started entering the information.
Because I had refinanced my home in 2008, I was not sure how much of the mortgage interest I could claim as a tax deduction. I thought the software on the site would figure this for me, but it does not. You have to determine that amount and enter it.
I did some research and found the IRS has Publication 936 that explains the home mortgage interest deduction. This is the link to Publication 936, if you are needing this information your self. You can get a PDF file to print out if you go to the Publications and Notices section of the site. After reading the PDF, I was still worried I was doing something wrong.
Because you don’t have to pay until you are ready to file your return, I decided to try out H&R Block’s web site too and see if it was any better in the area of mortgage interest deductions. It was very similar to Turbotax and worked fine, so I’d recommend either site.
I decided to use a feature on the H&R Block site that would let me ask a tax professional a question. I could not submit my question until I had paid for the filing of my return, so I decided to use H&R Block to file my return and paid them. I asked my question about mortgage interest and about an hour later I received my response saying that I was figuring it correctly.
I finished filing my taxes and am getting a very good refund this year. I am very happy about that. I’m going to put some of it in a savings account to use as our emergency fund and then put the rest toward paying off debt at the top of my debt snowball.
The application I turned in to Discover Card to try to get their card with the 0% balance transfers for 12 months and 5% cash back on gas purchases was denied. They said it was because I already had a card with them. I know Chase doesn’t mind that. I have taken out 3 cards with them and they took over two companies I had accounts with, so all together I have 5 accounts with them. Three are paid off and one is close, so I hope to have them out of my life soon.
Discover’s letter said that if there were features on the card I was applying for that I’d like on my card I could call and speak to a representative. I may try that soon if no other offer comes along. I just tried to fill out another application inline, but the companies web site told me that area of the site was down for maintance. Of course, I didn’t get that message until I had completed everything they wanted. I have no idea if what I entered was submitted or if I’ll have to do the same thing all over again.
I got two rebates in the mail today. $80 from Goodyear from the tires I bought in November and a $7 rebate for buying a DVD of “The Dark Knight” for my nephew at Christmas. That’ll give me a little extra to throw at the debt this month and I can sure use the help.
Not only did I have my biggest electric bill ever, but we spent way too much by going on my daughter’s field trip for school a couple weeks ago. She earned a trip to a hockey game by reading a certain amount of books. She had a free ticket and the school was going to bus the students to the game in a town about 80 miles away, but her softball team wanted her to attend a softball clinic that afternoon in another town. I thought about making her choose between softball and hockey, but when she asked if there was a way to do both, I told her I’d drive her to the hockey game after the clinic. We were late getting to the game and the only tickets that were left cost $30, so my wife and I spent $60 to take her to her free game. Due to the length of the softball clinic, we didn’t have time to eat before the game so we spent way too much at the concession stand. The unexpected cost of the tickets forced me to visit their ATM which added a couple bucks in bank fees.
By the time I add up the softball clinic fee, the gas, the tolls, the bank fees, the parking, the tickets and the food, I bet I spent close to $200 that day. It was fun, but if I had known a couple weeks before that I was going to the game, I could have volunteered to be a chaperone and gotten the tickets through the school for $9.00 each!
I was talking to a co-worker who told me he had ordered a new notebook computer. While we were discussing it, he said he ordered the top of the line model. “I just had them upgrade everything, ” he said.
“What did that cost you?” someone asked.
“A lot, ” he replied. “But I was putting it on my credit card and I’ll never be able to pay that thing off, so what difference does it make?”
Everyone at the table fell silent for a moment. I wondered if they were thinking “That’s Dumb!” or “I know the feeling!”.
I ran up a lot of debt, but never did I think it was hopeless to pay it off. Maybe I’m just an optimist. I knew I was getting in too deep and tried to stop using the cards, but it seemed something would come up and I’d think “OK, I’ll use it one more time and then start getting it paid off”.
Sure I had my doubts that I’d be able to pay it all off (and still do sometimes), but I never thought about adding more to it thinking it didn’t matter.
I hope my friend isn’t still spending the same way and is working his way out of the debt. Actually, he probably can’t spend that way. With that attitude toward spending, I’m sure he reached his credit limit in a short time.
What is sad, is he hadn’t had the credit card very long. He’d often use break time at work to balance his check book and had told me several times that he didn’t have a credit card and didn’t want one. I secretly wished I was in the same situation. I really hated to hear about him getting a card and already running up a bill he didn’t think he could pay!
Maybe I should have told him how envious I was that he didn’t use credit. Maybe I could have warned him of the pitfalls that come with credit card debt. I doubt if he would have listened to me, but who knows. I’m writing this blog as a way to let others know, so maybe it’ll help someone avoid a mistake!
If you are about to charge a purchase to your card and you are already wondering if you’ll ever be able to pay it off, take that as another warning sign of too much debt!
