Refinance Complete- Paying Off the Credit Cards

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 on one) the checks won’t pay the accounts off exactly.  A couple of the cards will be overpaid and I will still owe a little on the others.

It’ll be odd to be overpaid on a card!  I wonder how hard it is to get them to refund the difference.  Maybe it’d be easier to use the card at the gas pump for the amount I’m overpaid and balance it out.  One of the cards that will be overpaid is a rewards card that I plan to keep active.  I will let the phone company and Directv charge my bills to it each month and then I will pay it off every month.  It’ll keep the card active and I am just a few points short of getting cash back from the rewards program, so those bills should earn me those points soon.

I’m making a spreadsheet of all my outstanding balances and once I know what they all are, I will list them in the order I want to pay them off to form my “debt snowball”.  Some people pay off the smallest balances first, some concentrate on the highest interest card.  I haven’t decided for sure yet, but I like the idea of knocking out the little ones first.  The fewer payments I have to make each month, the simpler my life will be.  I’m tired of having to keep up with a bunch of due dates.