JUST THE CREDIT CARDS, PLEASE
At the beginning of march, we had $30,428 in credit card debt.
In April:
we paid a sad, pitiful, lonely $228 on our credit card debt,
$0 was charged in finance charges
for a total of $228 debt paydown.
Our new credit card debt total is $26,635.
(Sad mopey face.)
THE ENTIRE PICTURE
| credit | car | home eq | total | |
| april | $26,818 | $18,840 | $46,693 | $92,351 |
| payments | -228 | -444 | -366 | -$1038 |
| interest | 0 | 79 | 248 | +$327 |
| april totals | $26,635 | $18,475 | $46,575 | $91,685 |
We lowered our debt by $1,038 for a total of $91.7K.
It wasn’t a fun month. Shall we go into it? I usually like to keep the “monthly totals” posts to just the numbers, but sure, let’s get into it.
We aim to put $1400 towards credit card debt each month. However, in April, we had some issues with the heat pump unit for the upper level of our home. We looked into getting it repaired, even had them repair it, to find that the replacement compressor was bad, put in ANOTHER new compressor, to find that the reversing valve was bad. Our HVAC company graciously offered to suck up what charges they had incurred at that point (labor to install and RE-install the compressors, refridgerant) and suggested we replace the entire unit.
We did. It cost $2500.
So April went kind of like this:
Pay minimums on the cards (and since we had just transferred balances, this wasn’t a lot).
Put what would have gone toward credit card debt toward a new heat pump.
Take the remaining needed for the heat pump from our emergency fund.
It also means that May will be spent replacing our emergency funds until it is back up to $2000 before we get back on the get-out-of-debt train.
On the bright side - I’m totally excited to see what our power bill is going to be at the end of this month! Sure, it’ll be apples to oranges, since it’s heating costs vs. cooling costs, but still! I can’t wait!
Luckily for us, May is a month where my husband gets paid 3 times instead of just two (he is paid every 2 weeks), so we should be able to build the emergency fund back up AND put some money toward debt, not to mention a couple of events going on (a birthday, family visiting, anniversary, memorial day) that need to be budgeted for.
We also have a couple of changes in how we do our finances, which I’ll detail a bit more later, but the short version is we’re switching to a high yield checking account, we’ve opened an american express blue cash to start getting better credit card rewards, and we’re going to pile up money to earn interest while paying only the minimums on our 0% cards. I’ve tweaked and tworqued my spreadsheet to include our “debt savings” so that we will be sure to stay on track and keep that money safe. We’ve already received our new amex cards and have started using them, but we’re still waiting for our new checking account to process, so more on all that later!
-99k