oy. so i've carried a credit card balance since last july. before that, i've never had to do so in the 8+ years i've had a credit card. i haven't made much progress cutting it down, so...

i've said goodbye to my cell & switched wife to verizon (as everyone she knows is IN on it).

said goodbye to directv.

said goodbye to pet insurance. (they're on their own now!)

switching savings to account that'll pay 3.8%+ APY instead of a measly 1.25%APY.

opening new credit card account to transfer balance over at 0%APR and $0 in transfer fees.

most likely saying goodbye to going to lollapolooza. :\

buuut, not saying goodbye to my music budget. (NEVER!)


it looks like my wife is going to quit her job too. (she works at home.) so we'll be dropping our second landline too in a month.

and ALL of this just to break even and be able to pay the min balance on the new card + a little extra each month.

*sigh*

being married is financially tough. when i swung single, i rarely even looked at my accounts -- had them all automatically payin shit & savin my arse.

It's hard when you live paycheck to paycheck. I have to cut down on my spending too.

No shit. I'm having dreams about alcohol. I want it so bad.

can i ask where?

i just opened one at HSBC, which was offering a 4.8% promo thru april 30th.

and for the first time in a LONG time, we are credit card debt-free. feels nice.

Damn, that's rough. Lot of stuff to give up at once. I've always paid my credit card in full every month, but the last few months I've been really spend happy. Especially this month, my friend was down from Chicago visiting me.

So basically with the credit card bill + rent due at the same day, I had to either float some money on my CC for the first time, or pay it all off and leave like $10 in my bank account. I paid it off.

Washington mutual is giving m 3.15% on my checking acct.

it's treating me pretty easy.

ask me that again when I'm 60.

shouldn't she be keeping her job? like, to pay bills and stuff?


what's changed since you got married? is it just having two people on an account that's the problem?


a coworker set up a free lunch for us with some financial planners today. they were talking about "wealth management" and "what do you want in your future?" talking to a bunch of 20-somethings who make >$30K per year. that just made me sad. i was like, "can you turn $0 into something? no? then, you can't help..."

ingdirect.com

their promotion is 4.3%apy for a limited time (ending in apr sometime), then it goes down to 3.80%apy.

[EDIT: oh, and hsbc is the cc i have the big balance on. alanis thinks this is ironic.]

Man, this looks eerily familiar. I put myself (and my wife) in serious debt when I got married in December and bought (another) house. My old house and her old house are still on the market, and it's seriously cramping our style. This was the second time in my life I've carried over a balance on credit cards (the first time was only for one month), and it's a pretty large balance.

I did the following:

* switching savings to account that'll pay 3.8%+ APY instead of a checking account paying a measly APY

* opening new credit card account to transfer three credit card balances over at 0%APR and $0 in transfer fees

* went two months without buying music (normally I buy 2 - 6 CDs/LPs per week)

* stopped going out to eat as much for lunch (this also was a health choice)

* cut back on alcohol purchases

* started watching the balance of my check book (especially since taxes are coming due) for the first time in a long time

yeah, i looked there too. had never heard of either or done anything like this, so i just kinda randomly chose HSBC. they both seem to be pretty much the same though.

I accumulated an "asshole" debt post college when I got a job, that paid too little and basically spent freely on everything from music, DVDs and stuff of that nature to groceries and bills. It sucks. I feel completely in over my head and completely owned by a corporation. Unfortunately, I have a nasty addiction to buying music, which sucks. They are so evil, its not even funny. I would say probably 75% of the people I work with could be in what is considered "heavy" debt. Tale of the nation, I'm afraid to say.

she works for a theatre which is really a non-profit organization, but she was able to swing a paycheck every 6-ish weeks along with keeping her name on people's minds when it came to auditioning for new parts. but she found out from the guy in charge that his heart's not in it anymore & eventually her job will be phased out. so they agree on 1 last paycheck for the work she's done since she came back from maternity leave.



2005 = my new job (planned), new house (planned), her new car (planned), my new car (unplanned thanks to a misguided deer), baby conception (planned, but we were trying for 1yr+ so didn't know when it'd happen), brother's wedding nearby boston (planned by him, but not me; flying in/out of boston + car is expensive), wife's employer losing interest in his own business (unplanned)

just a bunch of flippin variables. luckily my new job pays yearly and quarterly bonuses, plus stock options (that'll be cashing out come april), so hopefully we can burrow out of cc debt in about 6 months.

living by paycheck sux. how do most people do it? i'd resort to alcoholism, but booze is pretty pricey! (kool aid, here i come!)

can your wife put herself in a box? there's good money to be made out there on pearl street you know....

sounds like some people are a little too uptight for some old-fashioned bikini car washes.

FYI, I just found out about Paypal moneymarket accounts. A friend recommended and it apparently has the best apy.

Six pack a day keeps the creditors away.

interesting. wheels are already rolling to ing, but that's something to look into if that 4.33 remains.

ingdirect has no min balance (fees).

and we just did our taxes last nite. for the first time i OWE in like 16-ish years. and we owe 4 digits-worth between fed & state. i'm selling my appendix.

ING is nice. I've been using them for about a year now. The only thing I don't like is the transfers in or out of the account are a little slow.

My gf and I just set up a joint account with HSBC for travel (Aus/NZ next year). It seems like HSBC has stayed slightly above ING in the past, but I'll be curious to see what happens to both when the promo periods end.

I'll join in this financial issue.

Both my wife and I owe insanely huge amounts of money after going through grad school and these financial fuckers have no sympathy. I'm being crushed by the bank right now for my student loans. I haven't been able to pay all of my federal loan for the last couple of months because I was appealing my interest relief and in the meantime, the interest built up and now I owe nearly two grand which they want NOW, so everyday when I get home I have to get on the phone with them and tell them I'm trying to pay but I make shit money. Their reply? "Then you should borrow the money from a friend or relative, sir" What a miserable fucking bitch she was.

Oh, and the gov wants a couple of grand in taxes, to boot. I'm thinking about robbing a bank or something. That or drugs, I hear one can make some good scratch doing that.

Having been through years and years of credit woes (thank you, ex-husband!), I've learned a few tricks.

- If creditors are calling every day and asking for money, you can tell them not to call you anymore and they can't call you again. They'll send letters and f*ck up your credit further, but at least they won't call.

- If you have hospital debt, you can work that out with the hospital by asking them to write some of the debt off. Usually you can get 10% off if you claim poverty.

- If you're up to your asshole in credit card debt (minimum payments aren't helping and interest is adding up), you can call the credit company and ask them to close the account, stop adding interest, and just let you pay the thing off. I don't think this looks good on a credit report, but paying it off over years and years isn't going to help you any, either.

- Sometimes you can ask the collection agency to accept a percentage of what's owed and again, a negative on your credit report, but time heals all credit wounds.

And those 0% interest credit cards are sweet, too. I have a balance on one that I could pay, but since the interest is 0%, why bother? That money is sitting in my ING account. And before your 0% perod expires, you get a new card that offers a free balance transfer and another year at 0%, so you can wait another year to pay it off. At this rate, I'm never going to have to actually pay that money back.

The other sweet deal in credit cards is getting cash back. I have a Citi Dividend card, and I've gotten almost $300 back in the last year.

Paypal is a beating. Most of our sales comes in throug paypal and we let that money sit in there as long as possible. We get 4.45 (business account, personal might be different), plus you get 1.5 back on every purchase you make with your card. It's very nice.

just found this out yesterday. money deposited in ING today isn't available for transfer to checking until apr 11