The wife and I get paid every other week which means we get 26 checks a year each. Since March of 2006 I have been alternating paying each mortgage with each paycheck. One payday I would pay the first and the next payday I would pay the second. I never skipped sending a mortgage payment and now it has opened up some time in the calendar to use some money to attack our debt.
Thanks to due diligence the 1st mortgage isn't due until April 1 and the 2nd mortgage isn't due until May 1 so I can take our next two paychecks (roughly $7k) and make a nice dent in our debt. I ended up making minimum payments on 5 cards and made a huge dent in the Visa she uses the most (Amazon Visa by Chase) which looked like this: 17.23% APR, $5900 balance and $7300 limit. I was able to make a $2500 payment on the card so it has a lot more breathing room. I have an email into Chase about cutting the APR down so I'm hoping we hear good news in the next day or two. It feels good to see such a gash in a card like that! I plan on gashing that card again but if Chase ends up dropping the APR I'll probably find another higher APR card to gash. One step at a time of course!
Ahead on the mortgage
February 22nd, 2007 at 08:13 pm
February 23rd, 2007 at 05:28 pm 1172251689
In your first entry you mentioned you were thinking about setting up a budget. I highly recommend using envelope budgeting software over MS Money or Quicken for tracking a budget. Here are some that I found. I like Mvelopes the best, but it is also by far the most expensive. The others have various pros and cons.
My Spending Plan:
www.myspendingplan.com
Mvelopes:
www.mvelopes.com
Crown Money Map:
https://www.moneymapsoftwaresupport.com/default.asp
Home Budget:
http://softperfection.com/hb
Budget:
http://www.snowmintcs.com/products/budgetwin/index.php
YouNeedABudget:
www.youneedabudget.com
February 23rd, 2007 at 06:55 pm 1172256938