I don’t think I posted the other detailing my plans because it is largely personal and many people shouldn’t know. I post some things for my benefit to see how well my planning went.
Paying Bills
I’m paying most of my bills using my bank’s bill pay. Now I don’t have everything on this. My insurance, cell phone, mortgage, and utilities are not using it yet. I think I can move my insurance to the bill pay, but I’m not going to worry about it. Most of the bills were paid by bank to bank and it causes problems when you forget that it is coming. With the bill pay, I can see exactly how much money is going to whom and when. Also, my bank will hold that amount so I won’t be able to accidentally spend it.
Automatic Savings
I’ve been saving for the past 4 weeks and while the amount is still fairly small, it is a decent start. I no longer consider that amount part of what I have, so I don’t feel like spending it. I’m going to be using it a lot more in the future, both to pay off my current outstanding debt and to make purchases in the future. I’m going to take the approach of saving up the money before I buy something, so that I am very rarely buying something with a credit card.
The reason I’m saving cash instead of paying off more cards is so that I’ll have that money in case I need it to pay other bills. If I use it to pay credit cards and then have to use that same credit card to pay other expenses, then I’m not getting ahead. At least it provides a cushion to prevent me from having to use credit. At some point I hope to save $200 to $300 and I should be able to after I pay off all of my credit cards. My goal is to eventually have about 6 to 8 months of salary in the bank in the case of emergencies. In this way, if something bad happens with me, my house, my job, etc that I won’t be in a position where I have to sell body parts to pay the mortgage.
Paying Credit Cards
With the amount of savings I have, I should be able to pay off one credit card with a small balance in about 3 weeks. I am going to wait another 4 or 5 weeks, so that I can still have enough savings to start on other projects. With the one credit card paid off, I’ll only have to worry about 3 more. The only problem as I see it is that paying this card off will only give me an extra $50 to $75 a month. However, I suppose it will lighten my mood having one less card to worry about.
The credit card with the highest balance will be paid off in 36 to 38 weeks or 8 to 9 months. I may get this card down to a thousand and focus on other cards. The two other cards, one is the second highest, but is a store card, so I’m more concern with keeping it in good standing and then waiting until the other cards are paid off before focusing on it. I made the mistake of paying too much on that card to only have no cash left over and had to resort to using my other credit cards. I’m a little bit wary of repeating that same mistake.
The good news is that one company has dropped me, so after I pay off two cards, I’ll no longer have that company. I’ll be dropping two more credit cards. This will affect my credit score a great deal, however, I feel that with the house, the one credit card, zero balance on all of my accounts, and good credit history that I will be able to get new cards of moderate balances and with APRs and terms that will be far better than what I’d ever get with the ones I have now.
Extra Money
I’m going to work on several projects that I’ve been putting off for a number of years now. I believe that when these projects are completed that I’ll be able to pull in some money. Albeit, it most likely will be zero to extremely small amount a month. However, it is far better than what it is pulling in now and anything is better than nothing. I have the motivation to work on these projects and I think that when a few of the cards are paid off that a few of the projects will also be completed.
Well, I plan on taking shortcuts to allow for the projects to be completed sooner. They might not be done in exactly the fashion I would have hoped, but at least they will be done. I plan on revisiting certain elements once they are complete, so that they can be optimized and perhaps sold for money.
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