Well our daughter's team has a game tonight but she will not be playing of course. Here's to hoping they win!

I got a letter from Wachovia today that really ticked me off. Starting April 1st there will be a $5.95 monthly charge for accessing your accounts directly from Microsoft Money, Quicken or Quickbooks UNLESS you have a certain type of account (which means you have to hold an average daily balance of at least $1500 to keep the access free.) Well I've never had a problem with Wachovia before but in my current debt situation I'm in no position to keep an average daily anything! So I'm considering switching to Commerce Bank here in PA. They have a free checking account that fits our needs (and our company now banks with them...we also switched away from Wachovia business-wise about a year ago) and no fees for using MS Money. Since my wife and I have seperate checking accounts they want $5.95 from each of us which is ridiculous. We both agreed a single checking account serves our needs better anyways. The only thing is everything I pay is online with our current accounts and we'd have a lot of data to change but it's not worth the ridiculous service charges! Maybe after I'm debt free I can revisit accounts with mandatory minimum balances but for now it's not money smart to do that.

Either that or just go to Wachovia's site and download it to Money from there. Bank of America already makes me do this for credit cards so it would just be more time downloading transactions. I'll have to decide!

So far no $ spent today...but I'm sure tonight there will be some $ spent. I mentioned the shirts and I'll put them down later tonight. Here's the tale of the tape: $17 on dinner for four after the game (they won!) and $20 on the shirts. So $37 spent.

***Friday Spending Plan***
Balance: $105
Spent: $37
Remains: $68

***Weekly Stock update***
Revisiting the CRWN I bought the day after President's Day at $3.90. It closed today at $4.92 (up around 70 cents since start of day Thursday!)

OK here's what I am thinking. My wife and I have seperate checking accounts and usually between the two of us I like to keep about $1000 so that we have a cushion in case of emergency. Well since our debt is ginormous (a combination of gigantic and enormous!) I thought why not delve a little deeper into the debt and go a little light in the checking accounts? I realize it's a risk but I think at this point we need to keep the pressure on the debt reduction and with more and more stuff going to ebay I can probably recoup some of the dough as we go.

Here's how it shapes up. Combined we have just under $1300 in both checking accounts. I know based on our budget I'm going to need $433 before our next payday. So that leaves $867 to make a mark. I'm going to put an additional $500 on Card 9 to bring it under $2000 and today I got an email stating Card 5's statement closed with a finance charge of $92 and that a min payment of $154 was due on it. So I'll use $654 to pay those two amounts and be left with $213. It's a lot closer to that 0 than I like to be with my checking accounts but in this reduction scenario every little bit helps.

As I said it's a risk because if we have something come up over the next 12 days where we have to write a check we're only going to have a couple hundred to work with but I think right now it's the right thing to do. I have an additional $200 in an overdraft savings I can freely transfer to cover a check but I don't want to do that. So no checks from now until payday! I think we can do this. Let's update the debt tracker:

Updated matrix:
Card 1/$12097/$20000/14.23
Card 2/$15215/$31000/12.24
Card 3/$8135/$12500/12.24
Card 4/$6211/$9000/18.24
Card 5/$6151/$9000/18.24
Card 6/$6143/$8000/0.00*
Card 7/$5903/$10000/4.99**
Card 8/$3821/$10000/0.00***
Card 9/$1971/$7250/17.24
Card 10/$3464/$4400/16.99
Card 11/$2815/$3900/13.99
Card 12/$2100/$2500/0.00****
Card 13/$4075/$4500/5.82

*Teaser rate ends 4/1/07 (up to 13.99)
**Balance Transfer rate
***Teaser rate ends 8/22/07 (up to 24)
****Teaser rate ends 5/1/07 (up to 13.99)

$81008-$78101=$2907 off since day 1.

Today our accountant showed up at work and collected all the paperwork he needs to do our taxes. I'm excited to see how it all plays out.

It's a no spend day today which is good. We'll need to try our best to not spend any money this weekend (or realize that if we do we only have the $105 left to last us until next Wednesday so it better be a needed purchase!) My daughter will be watching her team play in the state playoffs tomorrow on TV with a first round game and I think we're going to be spending $20 on these booster t-shirts (when your kid plays you get stuck with these costs...even if she can't physically play) but I'm not sure yet. I'll add it tomorrow night after I know what the total is.

*Thursday spending*
Balance: $105
Spent: $000
Remains: $105

I got an email last night saying Card 11 has a payment due on 3/31/07 with a minimum of $61. The interest charge on this card was $33 so I've decided since I have a little elbow room to make a payment of $100 on this card. Since I believe it will be my next card to pay off after Card 9 a little extra past the minimum isn't a bad thing! So here we go:

Balance: $358
Card 11: $100
Remains: $258

So we have $258 in reserves from this paycheck for now. This gives me room to knock out a few more minimum payments if they show up before the next payday too. Yay!

Oh and the B/T to Chase went through today and posted to the account. There was a $75 transaction fee for the transfer (grr) but that's 4k that now lives at 5.82 APR for life. Which is good because I can push it to the back of the pack and get the cards from my credit report paid down (1, 2, 9 and 11.)

Updated matrix:
Card 1/$12097/$20000/14.23
Card 2/$15215/$31000/12.24
Card 3/$8135/$12500/12.24
Card 4/$6211/$9000/18.24
Card 5/$6214/$9000/18.24
Card 6/$6143/$8000/0.00*
Card 7/$5903/$10000/4.99**
Card 8/$3821/$10000/0.00***
Card 9/$2471/$7250/17.24
Card 10/$3464/$4400/16.99
Card 11/$2815/$3900/13.99
Card 12/$2100/$2500/0.00****
Card 13/$4075/$4500/5.82

*Teaser rate ends 4/1/07 (up to 13.99)
**Balance Transfer rate
***Teaser rate ends 8/22/07 (up to 24)
****Teaser rate ends 5/1/07 (up to 13.99)

$81008-$78664=$2344 off since day 1.

Doh! Well she's home today and has a swollen throat and can barely talk. $20 for a doctor visit and the doc said stay in bed so that's where she's going. My wife's going to the store to get her some things so that'll go on the spending plan for today.

The GOOD news is our son went out and shoveled the driveway and the walkways on his own without being told so mom called the snow removal service and told them not to come. She said she'd give him $15 for doing it so we save $71. Thanks son!

Ah let's just say the quick run to the store turned out to be the weekly run for groceries! So that will be added to the total.

***Spending plan***
Budget: $300
Doctor: $20
Son: $15
Grocer: $160
Left: $105

I would like to see our weekly fund last us through next Wednesday but it would be a surprise to me. Good thing I left a little cushion! Ugh...well at least that $160 included some meds at the grocery store for our daughter.

Thanks for the well wishes about her health. Hopefully she gets better quickly!

I'll pick this up from the last blog post. We currently have $2681 left from today's paycheck and we've paid $319 of it to debt thus far with a minimum payment on Card 1. Before I get started I'm going to set aside an additional $300 for the weekly cash reserve (in case we use the whole $300 this week. I want to make sure next week's cash is there!) So let's do that first:

Balance: $2681
Week $$: $300
Remains: $2381

So let's attack. First thing I'm going to do is knock off a couple of the wife's cards that are due 3/21 and 3/22 by paying the minimums. Remember we're working on my credit first by getting my util down so her cards can take minimum payments for now (all her FICO scores are in the 690's...while mine are a bit lower in the 660's with one in the 630's.) This is also good because I don't have to use the next paycheck to pay them. One is for $152 and the other is for $120. So let's knock them off.

Balance: $2381
Wife CC: $272
Remains: $2109

Now that all the minimums that had to be paid were paid...we can look at knocking some debt out of the park. Starting with (here you go Mr. Ramsey) 2 cards that have balances below $500 (Card 14 and Card 15 on the chart.) They are the cards with the two lowest balances and they are about to be eliminated.

Balance: $2109
The low: $551
Remains: $1558

Card 14 was one of those two due 3/18 I mentioned in the last blog post. Now for the other one! It happens to be the highest rate card that shows up on my credit reports. Card 9. I'd like to leave a cash cushion in my totals just in case of emergency so I think a $1200 payment to Card 9 would be fine and cut a nice chunk out of its ugly number. Let's do that now.

Balance: $1558
Card 9!: $1200
Remains: $358

So that leaves us $358 plus the cash reserves of $600 until next payday. When I pay the mortgage ($2500) then I will have $1000 left over plus whatever I have now to make min payments on whatever cards are due (and pay the cable bill due the 29th) and then the following paycheck attack the debt again just like I did this time. Now that was fun!

The matrix updated:
Card/Balance/Limit/APR

Card 1/$12097/$20000/14.23
Card 2/$15215/$31000/12.24
Card 3/$8135/$12500/12.24
Card 4/$6211/$9000/18.24
Card 5/$6214/$9000/18.24
Card 6/$6143/$8000/0.00*
Card 7/$5903/$10000/4.99**
Card 8/$3821/$10000/0.00***
Card 9/$2471/$7250/17.24
Card 10/$3464/$4400/16.99
Card 11/$2882/$3900/13.99
Card 12/$2100/$2500/0.00****
Card 13/$4000/$4500/5.82

*Teaser rate ends 4/1/07 (up to 13.99)
**Balance Transfer rate
***Teaser rate ends 8/22/07 (up to 24)
****Teaser rate ends 5/1/07 (up to 13.99)

$81008-$78656=$2352 paid since day 1.

Well today is payday and I have dived head first into the bills. The first bill paid was the electric company since that bill is due March 14th so I'll knock that one off the list.

Payday: $3500
Electr: $167
Remain: $3333

The next bill paid will be the minimum payment on Card 1 for $319. I was hoping the B/T would've applied before the due date of March 12th but I don't really want to take the chance of being late on a payment and the good thing about the B/T is the min payment should be significantly less next time since the balance is significantly less. I will have to make a minimum payment on another card (where I b/t'd the 4k) but at least the 4k will not be kicking me in the shin with a higher interest rate. In fact it'll be one of the lowest APR's I have at 5.82. So let's take off the min payment of Card 1.
Balance:$3333
Card 1: $319
Remain: $3014

Next we have a couple of cards due 3/18 but I'm going to skip them for a minute because they will come into play later. I'll explain it in a later blog post.

So now we come to the cleaning service on March 20th. I'm going to subtract it NOW because I know it's coming.

Balance: $3014
Cleanin: $133
Remain: $2881

We get paid again March 21st but remember the bulk of that paycheck is going to the mortgage. I really have two ways of attacking this. I can save half of what I need to pay the mortgage from this check and half from next check (so I would set aside $1250 from this check and $1250 from the next check) OR I can pay down debt with the bulk of this check and use the bulk of 3/21's check to pay the mortgage. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this...I have an inkling of what I want to do but I haven't committed either way yet. Ah time to ponder!

Oh the wife has about $100 in cash left from our $300 (since we wrote a check for the cleaning service...remember I had a birthday gift of $403 and used a part of that to cover it) so I'm going to give her $200 and refill the cash to $300. We'll revisit that next week to see where we're at. We thought about waiting til the money was gone before refilling but balked on that idea. So we can subtract the $200 from our total.

Balance: $2881
Week $$: $200
Remain: $2681

It's a snow day today for the kids as school is closed. We didn't get a lot but the roads are atrocious right now up here. We did make it to work and we're not taking lunch (I have started bringing granola bars to work for snacks...instead of wasting $.65 to $.85 on a snack in the machine!) so we can leave early today. I really love payday.

Ah I will be adding a card to the list at the bottom as the card I B/T'd the balance off to a lower rate card hit me with its final finance charge of $134.75!

It's ok...I will be paying it off tomorrow. Doh!

I have a hodge podge of things to talk about today...the first being Dave Ramsey. I'm not a big fan but I did read a review of his new book and in his debt plan he believes you should pay down your debt from smallest balance to biggest...ignoring the APR. I gathered that his argument was the emotional satisfaction of zeroing out cards would keep you motivated to continue to follow the plan. It's not a terrible idea to me IF and only IF the APR's are similar across all of your cards. I wonder if anyone is following this idea and can share some feelings on this (I know the numbers people...me being one of those...are a little miffed at Dave's trade of emotion for interest. You will feel better...but you'll pay for that feeling IMO!)

Next I got an email from Fair Isaac (for those not familiar with Fair Isaac they are the creators of the most widely used credit score...the FICO score. They are the authority when it comes to your credit score.) about what to do with old or unused credit cards. The message was plain and simple. Do NOT close any unused cards becuse it will more than likely damage your FICO score. I've learned from personal experience that utilization is the key to success with FICO and that's why closing your unused cards is a bad idea when it comes to your score. If you added up all your balances and then added up all your limits you could divide the balances by the limits and get your utilization. The higher the number the more it hurts your score. It's the same with individual accounts...the higher the amount to limit the worse off your FICO score will be. It's something to keep in mind if you're mortgage shopping or car shopping and you know you'll need a loan. Now there are a lot of variations of the score (Auto enhanced, Mortgage enhanced, etc.) but you can pull your Classic FICO on MyFico.com (and trust me this is the ONLY place you need to pull your score from if you want to know where you stand!) I'm not advocating people to go out and just buy scores but if you haven't ever seen it or are planning to buy a car or house in the very near future and are not paying cash for it I'd advise you to pull your scores from there. There are a lot of scores out there that claim to be your actual score but MyFICO is really the only place you can get all three true scores in one place. CPPSAVINGS code will get you 20 percent off each score if you need to go over there.

Spending today should be zero but we'll see what happens. Tomorrow for me and the wife is payday (yay!) so it will be a refill on the cash stash and we'll go into what I'm going to do with the money (I'm still figuring that out knowing I have a mortgage payment in two weeks that will eat up a sizable chunk of the next pay period's paychecks so I need to account for everything we'll need to have money for over the next few weeks to make sure we're covered 100 percent.)

Oh and in about 45 minutes an ebay auction of mine is ending and the current bid is around $150 for an old laptop I'm selling (with 25 watchers...so hopefully it keeps going up!) I could use a little bit of a cash burst before payday tomorrow to help attack cc debt!

***Update***
The laptop sold for $230! This thing was just gathering dust so I'm glad someone bought it. So 2 items down and we're at $239 made on Ebay! The buyer also paid immediately with Paypal so the money is in my Paypal account and I'm sending it to my checking account.

I paid the ebay seller fees today ($12.50) so taking that from the $239 we still end up +$226.50 in the black. If I take the 12.50 from the $44.26 that leaves us with $31.76 to last until tonight!

An update to the debt tracker as Wednesday's payday looms on the horizon. I was able to transfer $4000 from card #1 to the wife's card which had no balance and a $4500 limit and get a 5.82 APR for the life of the transfer (a current promotion from Chase!) This will allow me to cut 4k off of my utilization (so we go from around 80 percent to 60 percent on that card.) I will have to pay off the Chase card but we can put it to the back of the pack since the APR is low and it lasts forever.

She also was approved for a $3000 card with a 0 APR for 12 months on all balance transfers and we are transferring the bulk of a card that has an expiring 0 offer in August (which the rate then jumps to 24 percent!) So even though we haven't been able to make payments yet we are saving ourselves a lot in interest! That's the name of the game for us right now.

We have a budget buster but we knew it was coming so it's not a big shock. Thankfully with the money that's come in over the last week the budget buster is easier to take. It's my wife's cleaning service which I told her she could keep (she will not budge and she's been very good about everything else so I'm not going to push it!) I wrote a check and will be paying it from the birthday money I got last week ($403!) so it's not too bad. They come twice a month so if I figure it out of the weekly totals it's actually $66.25/wk ($132.50/visit!) We also gave the kids their allowances (they get $10/wk and we pay them twice a month) so that comes out of the budget as well. The wife actually has exactly $100 in her purse and on payday (Weds) I will give her the $300 weekly cash. That number is actually a little lower than what we could budget but the more we can send to the debt the better!

So for Monday (the cleaning people come tomorrow but I wrote the check tonight...so it's here!)

$130.51 Budget left
$66.25 Cleaning Service
$20.00 Allowances
$44.26 remaining under budget

The plan will be that she will give me $86.25 every Weds to cover these recurring costs. So I'm going to deduct them from our actual weekly allowance to make sure we stay on task. This one is a freebie for her since it's my bday money. From now on she'll get $260...and if she has $ left over she can hold onto it until we either get a surplus in weekly expense cash or we run out. We'll see how it goes!

Well we did a heck of a job this weekend with not spending money if I do say so myself (and I will...ha!) Saturday we spent NO money and I was able to sell a Day Timer on Ebay for 9 bucks and the old laptop I'm selling has a bid and 13 people watching it so I know it will sell in a couple of days! Income income income! We did go out to dinner but the company paid for it so we didn't have to spend any of our own money (yippie!)

Sunday we went up north to a town in NE PA to go through my wife's aunt's house (she's in a nursing home and is not going to be moving back to her home...it's been sold) and got to pick and choose some of her things to keep at our house. We picked up a couple of chairs (one for my office and one for our sitting room in the bedroom) and a chest and some other neat items including a coin collection with some coins that go as far back as 1878! We're not expecting them to be worth a lot but we are going to get them appraised so it should be interesting.

We also spent no money on Sunday. My in-laws bought lunch and drinks so we were able to go through the entire weekend without spending one red cent. Talk about a happy weekend for the finances!

So the spending plan:
Saturday: NO MONEY SPENT!
Sunday: NO MONEY SPENT!
Budget remaining: $130.51

Only three days to go until payday and we're well under the $300 goal we set for an 8 day period (from last Tues to payday!) Hopefully we can keep it up for the home stretch!

Well today's my birthday and to celebrate we spent some of our budget on a movie and concessions. I went to see Wild Hogs and it was funny! The total spent on the movie and the food was $26.50 but I did get a free movie ticket for the next time we go thanks to my Regal Crown Club membership! My daughter's bball team also won the district championship beating a team that had given them fits (and their only 2 losses of the year) so it was a great day all around.

Since it was my birthday my parents no matter how old I get still send me money and I also found a rebate check I hadn't deposited that was in the glovebox of the wife's car so I was able to deposit $403 into the bank account today! We will be buying some food tonight for dinner so I'll be putting that into the deductions after we get it.

***Friday Spending Log***
Movie and food: $26.50
Dinner: $12.50
Budget remaining: $130.51


***Stock Update***
This is a weekly update of a stock I put some money on the day after President's Day.

CRWN purchased 25 shares at $3.90
Close Friday: $4.28

It wasn't a lot but I didn't want to withdraw it so I thought I'd leave it and purchase a stock I liked. So far so good.

The wife did great! She spent only $123.50 and got plenty (and I mean PLENTY) of groceries! She used her shopper club card (as always) and saved about $8 with that. She also didn't clip coupons and wanted to from our Sunday paper but I told her she did great since this is around $80 less than what we average a week for groceries. We should be all set until at least next Wednesday (payday!) and she really didn't skimp on anything. In fact the most expensive item she bought was refills for my razor cleaner (I have that Braun Clean & Renew and the refills are $10 for 2.) I got about 3 months out of the original so I expect to get 6 months out of these 2 refills. So to update our spending plan:

$300.00 start (Tues 2/27)
$130.49 spent
$169.51 left!

She's at a technology fair in Philadelphia today and she can put everything down there on the company Visa so she shouldn't be spending any money (except maybe coffee in the AM...she'll let me know.) I'm at work and she got me a bunch of those crystal light to go packets which run about 30 cents/packet (so I basically can just fill up a bottle of water...we have bottled water delivered at work.) It's less than half the cost of a 12 oz soda here and I get 16.9 oz of either fruit punch of pink lemonade to drink. I can usually go through 4 packets a day (on average) so with the 2 boxes of 10 packets each that's a work week's worth of drinks for around 6 dollars. I'll take that anyday!