Two Down, Twenty-Eight To Go

So, here it is and two days of the challenge that I set for myself have now passed. Luckily, there were no perishables yet to purchase (but that will change by the weekend) and the pantry slowly gets cleaned out and the savings slowly add up. For those of you mathematically inclined, it works out to be $8.33 a day that I have budgeted for food. With two days of no grocery shopping, it now stands at $16.67. This is money that will be used to pay do credit card debt and bring it closer to the day when there is no more credit card debt.

You have to watch everything that goes on about credit card interest rates, terms. No longer will you throw away the mail thinking that it is merely junk when it may be a letter that is informing you of an important change to your credit card terms and conditions. I received one of those letters once and am glad that it was read. It seems that the card was changing from being a fixed rate (I believe that it was 8%) to being a variable rate. Keep in mind that this was back when the interest rates were on the rise and it was going to mess up what I thought was going to be a set amount due each month to a varying amount. When I ran through the numbers, it was going to end up costing more in the long run. I wrote the issuing bank and said “no thanks” to the change, and they ended up closing the account.

If I would have only knew the things that I do now, I would have opened each and every statement that I got to make sure that I wasn’t being taken advantage of. Credit card companies know that most people don’t even read through their mail and they count on that so that they can make more money, either in interest or in penalties. Think that your bill is due on the 3rd of each month? You had better check your mail to make sure that they didn’t make it the 1st. That way the credit card company could stick you with a late penalty, which is nothing but pure profit for them.

For a great program that you can use to pay less and eliminate your credit card debt, click here or visit my website.