I-78 Commute's Financial Ramblings

Well we have some good news and some bad news! First the bad news...the kids pretty much sucked down the rest of our weekly budget...to the point where we're going to try to make it on $250 from Monday until next Wednesday. It's not going to be easy but I think if we have an actual cap we might be able to pull it off. The kids needed money for school (daughter needed money for photography class...yes she's well enough to get back to school! Our son needed cafeteria money which we fund by writing a check to his Cafetrac account.) She also went to the grocery store for some extra stuff and spent $33. So our cash reserves look like this:

Balance: $68
Spent: $53
Remains: $15

The check to our son was for $50 (yes..ouch!) so that drops us to $35 in the red. It's ok the money is in the account to withdraw it but we are cutting the amount to take for next week to compensate for the check. I think we can do it but it'll be tough.

Now for the good news and there are a couple of "good news" areas. First I mentioned how I listed a bunch of items on Ebay (17 altogether!) Well FIVE of them sold already using the buy it now option which I required the pay immediately function and everyone did! Everything sold on Sunday and I made a grand total of $435 (that includes already paying seller fees!) So over the last week I've made a grand total of $661.50 on Ebay (which isn't a bad supplement on the income!) I still have 12 items listed and three already have bids so here's to hoping everything else sells and we make even more money! I've already put in the transfer for the money to go into my bank account so in a couple of days we'll have some extra elbow room and technically we could refill the cash to $300 if we pull from the ebay money.

One thing I am going to let my wife do is get her salon haircut and at first I was going to tell her to hold off another week but I can now let her do it and pay with some of the ebay cash (about $100!) Yeah it's a little different than my 10 dollar cut but I don't mind that she gets it done. I'll let her have some fun now and then!

My other good news is I got an alert from Equifax's Score Watch program (one of the only programs that monitors your true FICO score and doesn't give out a fake score) saying my score had changed. Well my Equifax FICO went from 665 to 707 after the updates from a couple of my cc accounts hit! I've been a credit monster for a few years now and to see that score climb over 700 is a thing of beauty. I'm getting closer and closer to that refi on the house and saving a ton in interest!

Got a bill for Card 3...they hit me with a finance charge of $80.45 so that brings its balance to $8215.39 with a min payment of $161! I'm still busy working on a possible (and probable) consolidation plan to cut down on the monthly payments and increase the amount left over to put to the principal. Here's the updated matrix:

Updated matrix:
Card 1/$12097/$20000/14.23
Card 2/$15215/$31000/12.24
Card 3/$8215/$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-$78181=$2827 off since day 1.

Just a quick update on a lazy Saturday! No money spent (we needed that!) It's been an ebay day as I listed 11 items (computer stuff...some old laptops etc.) to generate some extra cash and get some extra room in my home office. I'm thinking of putting the extra funds from selling the stuff there right to the debt. Either that or start an EF in an ING account (I have an orange savings that has about 150 bucks in it that I don't use.) I need to (for the 10th time saying it) consolidate those darn savings accounts into one sooner rather than later!

Balance: $68
Spent: $0
Remains: $68

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!

I got a reimbursement check today for $105.18 so that's nice to throw right back into the bank account. My birthday is on Friday so we're planning a budget-conscious birthday celebration. The wife postponed grocery shopping one day so she's going tonight. I can't wait to see how she does. Let's get to the nitty gritty (I'll update it later tonight!)

***Weds spending log***
$6.99 on food (it was my turn to buy donuts for the department this morning)

I'm going to start subtracting from the $300 budget we made to last us until March 7th (next payday!) so here we go:

Remaining budget until Mar 7th: $293.01

Keep in mind this budget is for ALL non-mandatory expenses but includes groceries. I'm only going to track the lump sum so my wife doesn't shoot me dirty looks when I ask her for receipts. She did promise to tell me where she spent it so I can at least categorize them myself (I can only let go so far of my crazy OCD over categorizing our spending!) Hopefully we come out well tonight at the grocery store!

This category is where I am going to track my debts and anyone with suggestions feel free to chirp in. As I mentioned in my main blog the goal for me right now is increase FICO as fast as possible so we'll be ready for the refi in March of 2008 on our mortgage. SO the main goal right now is to get the balances below 50 percent and then start attacking the interest rates one-by-one. So I will post accounts, balances, limits and APR's and each reply will have the payments made and updated balances (I think I may even post when I get notified a bill is due so that when I come back here it's just another reminder to pay the bill!) The sooner we see 0 the better!

Card/Balance/Limit/APR

Card 1/$12416/$20000/14.23
Card 2/$15215/$31000/12.24
Card 3/$8135/$12500/12.24
Card 4/$6363/$9000/18.24
Card 5/$6214/$9000/18.24
Card 6/$6143/$8000/0.00*
Card 7/$6023/$10000/4.99**
Card 8/$3821/$10000/0.00***
Card 9/$3681/$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
Card 14/$416/$5000/15.99
Card 15/$135/$17500/19.99

*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)


Now for some number crunching. When you total it all up it's $81008 in unsecured revolving debt. Ow that hurts! Now as I said we're talking about reducing balances to limits to increase my credit scores for a better rate at refi time. The cards that actually report on my credit reports are Card 1, Card 2, Card 9 and Card 11. So those are the cards I am focused on first. Card 1 needs the most help to get to below the 50 percent mark ($6399) followed by Card 11 ($932) and Card 9 ($56) so that's where I am focusing my efforts on first. I have some plans going forward so stay tuned to the blog and I'll be sharing them with everyone!

Yes it's true...after figuring out what our mandatory expenses were (mortgage, insurance, utilities) we came up with a number of $375/week for groceries and all other non-essential expenses. My wife seems to think we can beat that but we'll see when it all adds up. I went to the ATM today and pulled $300 (fee-free of course) from the checking accounts and handed it to her in exchange for all of her credit cards. That was fun...I told her I would "buy" all her cards for cold, hard cash. She is much more of a cash fan than I am so I am including her as the cash holder. This way I'll go to her when I need cash (as will the kids) and since she does 99 percent of the grocery shopping (and really shopping period) she'll know where she can save and where she can spend. She's more budget conscious than I really thought she was (which is great...because I'm not...hence I don't carry the dough!) I asked her if she could make it to next payday (8 days) on the $300 and she said "no problem!" She's going grocery shopping tonight so I'll let you know how we do!

TUESDAY SPENDING LOG****
None! Whoo hoo!
Sat-Tues total: $76.04

Our daughter has a playoff bball game tonight against a very good team so we'll be going to that. The good thing about being parents is you get in free to the games (so we save $20!)

Another cost cutting measure...I cut $25/month recurring fee for a subscription I had online. $25 I figure is way too much for any kind of online subscription (especially if I'm not getting reimbursed for it!)

Oh AND I listed an old laptop on ebay. Hopefully that will sell and give us a little extra $ (I have a bunch of old computer stuff that I'll be listing so I can't wait to hopefully see that stuff leave my house!)

I took zetta's advice and decided to purchase a book called All Your Worth and I have to say that it's really getting me going about exploring how and where the money goes. I paid $9.99 for the ebook after researching at Amazon (who had it for as low as $3.67...but with the additional $3.49 s/h and waiting for the book I figured an extra $2.83 was worth getting the book immediately and starting in on it!) I usually check to see if the book is available in ebook form and also check ebay and amazon (you can usually find great deals but make sure you figure in the s/h!) for cheap copies. Ebooks are good because you're not having to make room for the book and it's more portable (I can put a copy on my PDA or laptop and it goes with me.) Now to the book!

I'm about 60 pages in but the book's fundamental principle so far is to have three groups: Must have's (to live!), Wants (can you live without it?) and Savings. Your goal is to be able to fit each category into a percentage (50 percent on must have's, 30 percent on wants and 20 percent on savings.) Now there are a lot of little tidbits I will not go over because I'm not going to give away the book in a blog (not fair to the authors!) but there is one part of the number game that I thought would be helpful to people with credit card debts. It's so simple I wish I had thought of it on my own. Basically figure out what your credit card balances were one year ago (if you can get a statement or if you have the statement) and what they are today. Then subtract 1 year ago from today and put it down. Do it for every card you have and you'll get a real idea of how much of a dent you made in paying down your credit card debt. If your balance today is higher than it was one year ago you'll know you need to do a better job paying down that card's debt because you're not making enough of a dent to get yourself above water! It's simple enough and to me it was a very effective tool in seeing what lenders see as far as account history. Now this is just one small part of your journey through this book (like I said I'm only on page 60) but so far it makes a lot of sense and I will certainly be applying some of the ideas to get our spending under control. The nice thing about this book is it allows you to be very flexible and not have to micro-manage your finances. If you're someone that would rather work with a simple percentage for spending and savings this book is for you. They also help you get what you spend on in the right places and they do a good job of explaining it in simple terms. So far I highly recommend reading it (and I thank z for recommending it!)

***Monday spending***
$9.99 for ebook
$17.05 at Eckerd for personal care

The ebook I put under books and the Eckerd trip was toothpaste (bought a couple of tubes) and deoderant (Degree was on sale so I bought a few!) The wife got some candy for her desk at work. So from Sat-Mon we've spent $76.04 on entertainment, books and personal care. OR if we followed the budget advice in this book we spent $65 on WANT's and $11 on MUST HAVE's (though we didn't go to the grocery store for the toothpaste and deoderant where we usually get these items but it was because the sale price was better than our grocery store!) See if you're more of a lump sum budgeteer your life can be made easier by reading All Your Worth. I sound like a salesman but there really seems to be some good advice in this book.

Well we went to see the Number 23 today and it cost us $13.50 including concessions which is a great price. I again used coupons for free popcorn and soda and only had to pay weekend matinee prices so I'm happy. When you can make it through a weekend with the kids and only spend $50 it's a good weekend.

I'm basically making the blog my spending log so I can track everything we spend and post it right here. I have also been scanning all of my receipts into my computer so that way I have to look at everything I purchase and I don't just forget about it. Hopefully I'll be more conscious of the spending by doing this (and it's a great spot to remember what and why!)

We spent $37.50 today on entertainment. Not that I'm really thrilled with that but a family of four to the movies with a popcorn and soft drinks isn't too bad. I am a member of the Regal Crown Club (if you go to the movies and you have Regal theaters this club is worth every penny. I have had everything from free food, drinks and movies so far in this club) and today we used coupons for a free small popcorn and soft drink and had it applied to our total at the concession. As you know movie theater concessions are a huge ripoff but the club makes it a lot easier when you actually do want to purchase concessions there. The nice thing about this club is you can accumulate points when you get your tickets AND when you get concessions so they add up rather quickly (just make sure you remember to give your card to the concession stand...a lot of people I know didn't know you could do that!) Also you don't have to track your own rewards. When you earn one it prints out with your movie tickets when you purchase them. We saw Ghost Rider and it was pretty good (it's not a deep movie but it provides plenty of entertainment!)

Stock update: CRWN I bought at $3.90 at open on Tuesday closed on Friday at $4.25. Now I only own 25 shares so it's not like it's a lot of money but it's nice to see an investment growing instead of shrinking.

The company I work for pays our gas and car washes so we were able to not spend $33 of our own money today on that.

I noticed today our outdoor lights (sconses around the front door, side door and garage doors) were staying on 24/7 so I turned them off and will continue to turn them off during the day. We have our landscape lighting on timers but for some reason the sconses are not on timers. I will need to find timers for them (or dawn-to-dusk sensors) to save money on our electric bill. Just a reminder to check your lighting and don't leave lights on during the day!

Lastly, on the debt front: a new bill from Bank of America due 3/22. Minimum payment $152.00 and the only charge was finance charge of $89.36...doh!

I'm beginning to realize there is a lot of information at my fingertips that I have yet to fully take advantage of. I really hadn't played with MS Money's reporting feature too much in the past but I spent some time looking at one report and it looks like it will make it a lot easier to come up with a budget. The Spending by Category report! The one thing I am very particular about is making sure the information is in Money and making sure it's assigned to a category that makes it easy for me to relate to (if Money doesn't have the category I create it.) This report wouldn't be half as useful as it turned out to be if I didn't have the categories assigned to the transactions (memo to self: continue to be diligent!) I looked at a year-to-date (around 2 months) to get a satisfactory baseline and here are the scary numbers in order of spending:

1. Mortgage Interest Payments ran away with first place but obviously that's not too disheartening.

2. Utilities came in second. That's ok though since I pay our gas bill when they fill our tank (I have propane heat with a tank buried in the ground.) We actually went from 6/24/06 to 2/8/07 and had the tank filled for just under $1100 so it works out to about $137/mo which around here isn't too bad. I have a bill in Money to put away $150/mo for when I have to make this payment (and this time I have a little left over to keep for the next fill!) Other utilities include:

-Cable $155/mo (yes I know...but we do get our money's worth)

-Electric $200/mo (this was around $220 the last couple of months but I just got this month's bill (due the ides of March) and it's $160 so that's a beautiful thing.

-Water/Sewer: $120 paid quarterly

-Garbage: $75 paid quarterly

Cell Phones for us and the kids, our home phone and high-speed internet are paid by the company so that does save us a lot BUT our utils have to be budgeted for $570/mo. It always looks so much worse when you look at it as one big lump sum but it's a reality check and something we desperately needed to see! I had a personal Cingular account that I cancelled a few weeks back so that saves us $100/mo and I have a plan to sell the 8125 on Ebay so hopefully that gives us a little income boost! I also had duplicated a payment to the electric company in Money (one was auto-downloaded and one was manually entered and I failed to combine them...oops) so I now have an extra $211 in my checking account I thought I didn't have (and that will go right to them for this month's payment!)
I can actually say this blog is making me money!

3. Finance Charges came in third. I have to say that again to ground myself. FINANCE CHARGES CAME IN THIRD!!! Ack! In two months the CC companies collected $1800 in finance charges. $900/mo! What the heck?!! Well at least I have a debt reduction plan that if I can stick to it I will be out of this nightmare in about 2 years and 3 months. You can refer to my first blog post to get the skinny on the current ugliness. I have to keep the mortgage refi in March of 08 in mind so I'm attacking high interest debt AND high utilization at the same time. I made a $2500 payment on a Chase card that had a 17.23 APR and a $5900 balance with a $7300 limit and it felt good to cut it down like that! The card has been one of our best for rewards but Chase will not budge on the APR so I'm looking to pay it off FAST (being well ahead on the mortgage has afforded us the opportunity to do that.) Ugh...$900/mo! Crazy.

4. In 4th place: Household expenses which include $265/mo for house cleaning service (2 times a month), $172 for snow removal (it's $86 per removal) $95 for dry cleaning (not a monthly charge...more of a quarterly charge...I'll end up budgeting $50/mo I think...it's all the wife's stuff as I can wear sweaters and jeans to work) and a group of retail charges at places like Amazon, Target, Pottery Barn, etc. The same company that does our snow removal/salting also does our lawn cutting/maintenance so I'm planning on coming up with a monthly budget for them year-round.

5. Fifth place: Groceries! $668/mo! There has to be a way to chop that down. I need to sit down with the wife and go over this together. I'm hoping to get it down to $100/wk but we'll see if it's possible.

6. We get into Income Tax and Escrow payments before another tangible category: Clothing. $350/mo! That will end immediately. These aren't needed purchases...these are teenagers want purchases. I'm going to try to cut that down as much as possible. We have too many clothes as is.

It does get better after the clothing category but it's still interesting to see the numbers staring right back at you. There is a lot of work to do in this household that's for sure. I have some ideas swirling around in my head but if you want to throw out some suggestions I will certainly appreciate them all. Thanks to everyone here as I'm really on a roll to get us on the right track!

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!

I'm not much of a writer but I'll try to keep it at least a little bit interesting as we dive into our financial madness one small step at a time. Here is the skinny on the situation (a family of 4):

HH income: $140k/yr (we net $7k/mo after deductions)

Mortgage: We have an 80/20 that will have to be refi'd in March of 2008. So one of our goals is to improve our credit enough to get into the 700 club and save us a bunch of money a month on mortgage payments. Currently we pay $2500 and $700 on the two mortgages (I round up and add the difference to additional principal.) We just recently had an adjustment to the 80 that saved us $300 a month. I took that $300 and added it to my 401k. I never saw it so I will not miss it!

Credit Scores (these were pulled a few days ago at MyFico): 662/665/627. Wife: 692/697/684. I have one negative left and she has none. Our biggest killer? Utilization! Which I will get into in a sec.

Retirement: We have about $60k combined in our retirement accounts and we only have 401k's currently. I currently contribute 10 percent and she currently contributes 6 percent (she has an outstanding 401k loan that she has taken from her paycheck every month at a fixed rate.) The contribution amounts will increase over time because our employer provides a 25 percent match with no cap (so if we max fund the 401k at $15k they will add $3750.) We are both 100 percent vested in all accounts and our funds are American Funds. I am currently 50 percent into the World Growth and Income Fund, 30 percent into the Growth Fund and 20 percent into the New Economy Fund. I want to be aggressive in my retirement savings and these three funds seem to be the most aggressive. I only have 6 funds to choose from and of the other 3 two are bond funds and one is an Investors fund which hasn't exactly shown great movement. We will be increasing our retirement funds a lot once we get our next category under control.

Revolving debt: This is the ugly part of our financial picture. The harsh reality is we have about $80k in revolving debt and we're working feverishly to knock it down. I really spend more time staring at the numbers than anything else just to come up with as many possible scenarios as possible to pay it off and pay it off fast. I know the APR's and the balances like the back of my hand so I've probably had more ideas on how to attack it than anything else but never actually a real implementation where I've seen results. If I break it down by card, APR, balance and limit you see this:

AMEX 1: 14.23%/$15.9k/$20k
Wach 2: 12.24%/$8300/$12.5k
BofA 3: 13.99%/$6200/$8k
BofA 4: 18.24%/$6200/$9k
AMEX 5: *4.99%/$6100/$10k (B/T rate)
BofA 6: 18.24%/$6200/$9k
Chas 7: 17.23%/$5900/$7.3k
HSBC 8: 0%/$3800/10k (Teaser rate)
PETA 9: 16.99%/$3400/$4.4k
BofA 10: 13.99%/$2900/$3.9k
AMEX 11: 12.24%/$14k/$31k

Ok so when you add it up you're talking just under 79k in CC debt! As you can see by the APR's they're not very pretty but I have a plan to get out from under this rock in around 2 and a half years. I will say this for now. Most of the larger debt was money put into our new house (landscaping, builder upgrades, etc.) rather than on something we're not getting a return on in the long run so I feel somewhat comfortable about the debt BUT obviously this is our #1 red flag issue. I'm in the middle of asking everyone for APR rate reductions and B/T offers just to see what we can do to get the debt consolidated so we can start making larger dents at a faster rate. I came across some software that you can input the above info and it gives you a plan to pay off the debt while at the same time keeping your FICO score in mind and getting your utilization down and that's really where I'm at right now since we're heading into a refi in a year. I'll be going over and revisiting this debt reduction plan ad nauseum in my blog to let everyone know where we stand as we go along.

Software: I am always playing with new computer software to try to come up with somewhere to store all of my financial information. I have been using MS Money for about 7 years and I have everything and anything in there. I also use a basic excel spreadsheet that I input the names of the cards, current balances, dates due, minimum due, actual paid and date paid so that I have a quick snapshot of what I did that month to impact the debt reduction. I have a debt snowball spreadsheet that I can input the same info and it calculates the cards to pay off first and how much to pay on each card. It's not fool proof but it works well for me. Lastly I use the above mentioned software that allows me to input the card info to come up with a financial plan of attack with keeping my credit scores in mind when it figures out payment plans. So there is a small arsenal of weapons to go at the debt we currently have.

Budget: It currently doesn't really exist in any true form. This is going to be another critical step for my family as I will be revisiting all of the data in MS Money and coming up with what we spend per month in every category I can (we have all the data already categorized, now it's just a case of crunching the numbers to fit us.)

Savings/Emergency Fund: Doesn't exist...the sad thing is we have savings accounts with Bank of America, Wachovia, ING Direct and M&T Bank and in all of those accounts we maybe have $500. That will have to change sooner rather than later!

Oh one more thing...I had forgotten about $114.27 I had in a Sharebuilder account that I had basically neglected. I did a little research on cheap stocks (under $5/share) and decided on buying 25 shares of Crown Media Holdings (CRWN) at $3.90 a share on Tuesday morning (when the markets opened.) It's not a really serious investment but I figured this way I have 25 shares in a stock that has some potential rather than the money just sitting there lifeless. If it does well great and if not the most I stand to lose is the $114.27 (assuming the stock totally tanks out!) I could've just put it into a fund or even an ETF but I thought why not try a stock and see how it plays out? It's more of a fun thing to do right now.

So there you have it...that's the baseline of the family's financial plan and now I can begin to really attack our problems and have fun while I'm doing it. Hooray for blogs!