Debt Payment

September 23, 2016

Today I am going to the bank to pay my credit card.  The minimum payment on the card this month is $172. I am going to pay $435 on a balance of $5706.  I am paying about 7.5% of the balance today.  Originally, I had hoped to pay more, $585 or just over 10% of the total balance, but because the credit card we pay off monthly was so high this month (stupid kitchen) I had to allocate some of the money there. (Actually, it wasn’t all the kitchen. We bought tickets to some shows for ourselves and 4 other couples and they owe us the money for those to the tune of over $600! YIKES!)

Although the minimum payment on the card keeps decreasing, going forward I’m hoping to pay a minimum of $300, but hopefully more each month.  According to the chart on my statement, if I pay only the minimum payment, I will be paying this card off for the next TEN YEARS!!!! That’s crazy, folks!!!! Ten years to pay off purchases I made 1, 2, 3, or 4 years ago! I don’t want to still be paying off my Hawaii trip from the summer of 2012 in ten years. It was a great trip, but no trip could be that great! In fact, I don’t want to still be paying my Hawaii trip off now!

I will be very excited to get the balance of that card under $5000. Right now, I’m just trying to keep my head up and remember that with every payment I make, more and more of it is going to the principle balance and less and less of it is going to pay interest. I can’t wait until I have more space left on the card than I owe. That’s a milestone I haven’t crossed in over four years. I’m hoping that will give me a little boost to keep our debt payoff momentum going.

My original goal was to have this credit card paid off by the end of the year, but now it’s really looking like a stretch goal.  We only have 3 months left in the year and I have over $5000 left to pay.  As far as debt payoff goes, the kitchen has really put a cramp in my style.  Instead of sending any extra money each month towards debt, I’m socking it away to help pay for things in the kitchen. Most importantly, the balance keeps going down. And I haven’t charged on the card since December of last year.  With Christmas coming up, I definitely want to continue that trend.

I am a little discouraged by the credit card bill of the card we pay off monthly because only 8 days into our new billing cycle and our balance is already at $1000, and that’s in the middle of No-spend September. We have about $200 cash towards that, but that’s still a much larger balance than I want.  The kitchen is killing us. It’s very expensive and we haven’t even gotten to the finishes yet. 

Generally, any money we have left over in our food or gas envelope at the end of a budget period, goes towards paying off extra debt, but lately, we haven’t been able to do that. All extra money is going to pay off our credit card that we pay off monthly. I guess the bonus here is that we can still afford to pay it off monthly; but the negative is we aren’t able to throw any extra money at debt.

I know I’m not a gazelle, but I can’t wait to be credit card debt free!