Had I posted this on the 8th, my mood would be very diff't. I'm in a pretty big funk lately. Things are NOT going good on the home front, I'm tired, I feel myself getting depressed. I started doing some "extra" shopping and don't even get me started on my eating and weight. It's been a long day and an even longer week so while i have time, I'll update where I am debtwise. Here is where I was 2/8/08:

Here is where I am as of today:

1. Old Navy Card. Last month I owed $432.86. Today it is Paid in FULL!

2. Toyota Car Loan. Last month I owed $1805.40. Today it is Paid in FULL!

3. William & Fudge. Lasst month $3,026.81. Now I owe $2876.81.

4. Capital 1 Gold (+ GA Taxes). Last month $4,873.29. Now I owe $4,727.29.

5. Direct Student Loan. Last month $7,690.45. Nw I owe $7,603.81

6. Target Visa (+ FederalTaxes). Last month I owed $9,205.81. Now I owe $8,940.81.

7. Sallie Mae. Last month $23,897.83. Now I owe $23,734.48.

Grand totals: Last month I was $50,723.33 in debt. Now I am $47,883.20 in debt.

In the last 30 days I have paid down $2840.13, resulting in me paying off 1 credit card and my car loan. Like I said earlier, I was way more pumped when the car was paid in full, but my mood is so blah now. I was driving today, heading to the mall for some moderate retail therapy, when it hit me, this is how it begins. I stop caring, it feels like too much work, it's so hard, I'm getting depressed and I tune out for a few months.

The fact that I told myself just come home and get the stuff updated and actually sat here doing just that for the last 1/2 hour means a lot. I'm sure things will be better in coming days and by then I'll be more in the mood to blog about money and debt.

Re: my cat, the grief is still there, but I'm feeling bette. We are looking into becoming a foster home for cats/kittens that need nurturing. Doing that in a way to guard my heart from what happened, not ready for the permanent replacement just yet. Also, I do have an idea of the cat I want next and until it shows up, this is a way to fill the hole in my heart and bring some kitten antics back into the house.

********

Now onto my debt.

What I am going to do, from now till the final pay off date is, track my progress monthly. The graph on the right side of the site will change each month (hopefully downward motions only...lol). In the blog part, I'll break down where I was and where I am. Also in the far right column, I have a quick and dirty cheat sheet of debt. Ok, here is where I was 1/8/08:

Here is where I am as of today:

1. PayPal Buyers Credit. Last month $112.50. Today it is Paid in FULL!

2. Capital 1 Visa. Last month $468.92. Today it is Paid in FULL!

3. Orchard Bank MC. Last month $1,027.70. Today it is Paid in FULL!

4. Old Navy Card. Last month I owed $683.44. Now I owe $432.86.

5. Toyota Car Loan. Last month I owed $2,057.68. Now I owe $1805.40.

6. Target Visa. Last month I owed $2,470.1. Now I owe $2,126.78.

7. GA Taxes. Last month I owed $2,183.74. Now I owe $2,183.74.

8. Capital 1 Gold. Last month $2,910.32. Now I owe $2,625.43.

9. William & Fudge. Lasst month $3176.81. Now I owe $3,026.81.

10. Federal Taxes. Last month $6,934.03. Now I owe $6,934.03.

11. Direct Student Loan. Last month $7,776.56. Nw I owe $7,690.45.

12. Sallie Mae. Last month $24,050.68. Now I owe $23,897.83.

Grand totals: Last month I was $53,121.83 in debt. Now I am $50,723.33 in debt.

In the last 30 days I have paid down $2,398.50, resulting in me paying off 3 credit cards. Now for some fuzzy math, bear w/me, this is a convoluted story, try to stay awake ;)

Back in January, I got "pre approved" for up to 10k @ 8.99% w/free balance transfer. Let me back up a bit more. When I first added up my GA Taxes, I must have missed a year, b/c I was off a few hundred bucks, actually owing bit over 2k and not the $1500 or so I thought.

Ok, so I'm getting these offers and then I get the tax bill and then I get a "convenience check" from Capital 1 Gold.

(There is much more going on behind the scenes, including 3 phone calls to the GA IRS, finding out one of the years went into collection, DESPITE the freaking fact that I already paid it and now I have to call them tomorrow and figure out why this all happened.)

Anyway, anyway my thinking was this: use the CC check to pay the tax bill then do a Balance Transfer to the new card.

Well, I ended up getting approved for $600 bucks. Yup. Before I knew it, $500 went to Cap 1 Gold. @ first I was pissed, but believe it or not, this all worked out for the greater good.

Remember the miscalculation on my part? (2k not $1500?)

Well I wrote out the CC check for the $1500 and mailed it on the 14th, bill was due on the 15th. After my 2nd call to the GA IRS, realizing it was over a week and no check posting, I went online and paid each year w/the cc.

By doing a balance transfer of $500, I was able to free up much needed space and the next day I went ahead and paid it off (that Juniper card will ONLY be used for car related purchases such as gas and oil changes, minor things I can pay in full each month).

*Whew*

Long story short, my cap 1 gold now has my GA Tax bill on it.

Now the next part of the story is, I felt my "true" debt didn't reflect the actual picture so I made a minor change to the chart and how I'll log things.

Target Visa card is the card w/the Federal taxes on it. I went ahead and removed the taxes from both credit cards. Each month I will report the pay down amounts separately. It won't be an exact science. Until the credit card part of the debt is paid off, I'll just leave the tax debt as is. All payments will simply count towards the older debt. Of course I'm not factoring in interest. When the cc part of the debt is paid off, I'll count the final payments on the same card, as tax debt. If that makes any sense @ all.

So now what? According to my overall breakdown for this year, updates in bold.

With that amount, @ the very least I'll pay off all the smaller credit cards:

PayPal Buyers Credit - (Paid in Full!)
Capital 1 Visa - (Paid in Full!)
Orchard Bank Card - (Paid in Full!)
Old Navy Card
Ga Taxes
Toyota Car Loan
Capital 1 Gold
and $1900.72 toward Williams and Fudge.

In the short term, that means over the for the next 10.5 months I need to pay off the Old Navy Card, Capital 1 Gold Target Visa*, Toyota Car Loan, GA Taxes and $1900 towards Williams and Fudge for a grand total of $8,448.78.

*since breaking out the tax debt from the cc's, the target visa balance was smaller than the cap 1 gold card.

********

Last thing, as this is my first full week w/o job #3 and I'm almost caught up on missing sleep. I started to reread a few entries and realize I left a few things hanging. I PROMISE. Tomorrow I am going thru all entries since the year started and conclude the cliffhangers.

I update my loan repayment progress on or around the end of the month.

Here's the debt chart from Jan 07: (I missed updating in in February)

Here's the loan progress chart from Feb 07:

Here's my March progress:

The minimums are as follows:

Rollover minimums from 4 paid off cards: $185
Toyota Loan: $263
Total Minimum: $448

+

My 10% snowball is $236.84.

=

New car payment: $684

********

The chart dates are wrong, I'll fix that next month...and...MS Money calculates interest slightly different than the actual amount owed. For consistency, and b/c it's always more anyways, I'll go w/what my statements say.

Also, I didn't factor in any extra payments to my March progress just yet. I like the shock and awe approach of repaying debt...more on that next week :)

Now that the credit cards are paid in full, the poor little monthly progress chart is empty, well not for long.

I've filled it up w/the loans, which means for about 15 days I lived in pure bliss of having nothing but 0's only to see it all filled back up again. *sigh*

No worries...I felt the same way when I filled it up w/the credit card debt. :\

Once I get that car loan paid off, which'll be a huge milestone, I can ramp up payments to the Direct Student Loans debt.

Here's the loan progress chart from February 06:

I'll post this monthly chart towards the of the month.

Recently, I got an email telling me a payment from an old thingy I did was made. In the whopping amount of $1.58. :O

That, coupled w/my windfall are being promptly applied to the principle on my car loan.

B/c when I say I'm digging myself out of this hell hole $1 at a time (see logo above) consarnit...I mean it!

So, a few weeks back, Robin in Savannah asked me about my car loan. For some reason, that question stuck in my craw, and while I put it on the back burner so I could focus on paying off the final credit card, I knew I had to get to the bottom of something that was puzzling me.

A few months back, my amount owed was $5,004, I remember that # b/c I felt a huge relief knowing by the next payment I'd be under 5g's. Fast forward to January, I check MS Money, only to find, I still owed $4,999.

WTF?!?!

When I tallied up what I paid since using MS Money, it was well over a grand, yet the amount owed only went down a few hundred bucks. Not only that, I had to put in an account adjustment of $117 (more!) to get MS Money to be in synch w/what I owed.

I called up World Omni Toyota.

The rep, Chris, who was QUITE rude by the way, and this isn't the first time I've called them and been treated rudely. Matter of fact, in the 3 years I've had the car, it's only my 2nd call to them. BOTH times the reps act as if they are collecting money and I'm behind calling to make a payment. Just plain old surly and rude.

Anywayz...

From Chris I got some basics, the percent is 7.4% and the pay off amount is different than what I currently owe b/c they factor in 10 days of interest. She's going to mail me a history of my payments, which since I pay by direct debit, I don't get. I went ahead and opted to have my statements emailed to me.

I went back into MS Money, deleted the old account and made a new one w/the new figures. Worked like a charm. Give or take a few cents, it now matches what I see online.

I also saw if I pay online, as in sending extra ducets, those bastards charge me $9.95 for the privilege. How kind of them *gag*

Bump that, I'll be paying them for free via my bank account thankyouverymuch. The one bright spot, there is no prepayment penalty, I'm past that point. You better believe I'm paying this sucker down pronto.

Now I have a similar tale about my Direct Student Loans, minus that nasty customer service, so I wont go into more details. To sum it up, interest rate is 7.125%, I deleted the old account, added the new one and that too is matching what I see online.

All of this made me think. Perhaps I should leave the William & Fudge debt for last, I'll have to double check w/Sallie Mae, but W&F aren't charging me interest. Though psychologically it'll feel good to get that paid in full, just like my rationalization on why to pay the car first, the $100 I pay getting added to another debt is far less than adding say $263 from the car or $131 from Direct or even $318 from Sallie Mae.

I don't mind them hanging around a bit longer if I can get the interest charging loans out of the way first.

And I'll put it out there, again, I'm really looking forward to having the Toyota Car Loan PAID IN FULL by the end of May, which would be so awesomely amazing if all I have left to tackle in the last 1/2 of 2007 are my student loans.

;)

So one of my plans when I pay off the Capital One Gold Card, is to turn my attention, and debt snowball, towards the next highest debt. Right now that position is just about tied by my Toyota Car Loan and one of my Williams and Fudge Student Loan.

My original game plan was to pay off the car loan next, that way I could drop my insurance and save an extra $60-$75 a month. But after talking it over w/a friend, that may not be the best thing to do.

I thought after 3-4 years the car wouldn't get anything back in case of an accident. But she told me I should look @ the blue book value for the car 1 year older than mine to now. If I pay off the loan by next year, it'll be the same amount of time. B/c it's a Toyota, which holds it's value, I may still get a few thousand.

Unless that is what I save when I reduce my insurance, doubtful I'm guessing it'll be about $720-$900 ($65/$75 times 12) then I should keep it fully insured till it the blue book value is less than what I can save on my own.

Makes sense.

The student loan isn't racking up interest, it's just a total amount due that I'm paying monthly, but I thought I can make a bigger dent paying off the car then rolling over all the monies + the $263 car payment to the student loan vs. rolling over $100 from the loan to the car.

*shrug*

It's not a huge deal, as they'll both be paid off, but I'm just fishing for ideas. Any pros/cons to paying either off first? Are @ this point are they both equal?

The major pro point is the psychological boost I'll get from paying off the car first, 1 less debt. Other than that, I gots nothing.

What do you think?

Another "adult" debt, car loan. I have a 2003 Toyota Corolla. Long sordid story, my first car died and permanent death. I then got a 2003 Toyota Echo. On the way to work, in a fluke accident, it was totalled. I then got the Corolla.

The car was about 12 grand w/a down payment of either 3k or 5k. It's been 3 years so it's fuzzy. My monthly car note is $263

As of this posting the owed amount is: $5,432.65

I will update this post as I pay down on this debt.