Just paid off MBNA!
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| Fri, 12-10-2004 - 1:25pm |
Two years ago I had a Chase and an MBNA both with $10,000 each and both maxed out. I had paid minimums for YEARS and they never went down, but I had nothing more to pay to them. I separated last year and we got enough from the house to pay the cards off, then on my own I ran up my Chase again to about $4k. Since my MBNA sat with a zero balance for a few months, I got an offer for 0% earlier this year and transfered from Chase to MBNA. I figured since they made so much off me for so long, let them carry my debt interest free. It was interest free until this month and I just paid it off.
Of course, in the meantime I had a bunch of extra expenses and ran up the Chase again. I got a solicitation for a new card with zero interest until November 2005. I tranfered the Chase balance to that one. I've been living within my means and watching my spending since the summer, and I finally feel I can keep from using my credit cards unwisely. I also know I can pay the new card off by the time the zero interest period expires. But I think I may just start paying the minimums on that and putting my extra money in a savings account (my christmas bonus allowed me to bump my savings account to $1,500). Then when the zero interest period expires, I can either pay it off or transfer it somewhere else at zero interest. At that point (end of 2005), I will be 6 months from buying new house, and I don't think a $6k credit card balance will hurt me, when I have $33k available between the 3 cards. So I will have some extra money saved to help me get into a house. At that time (summer 2006) dd will start first grade and I'll have about $600 extra per month since she will be in public school vs private kindergarden, and I can use that extra money to pay off the credit card.
Or I could pay it off by the end of 2005 and have less money to get into a house, but also zero debt. What do you guys think? Of course, this all assumes my car does not die before then. I have no car payment and my car has 105,000 miles.
I can't believe how far I have come in a few years. I still am not perfect, but my financial picture is 100% different than when I was married and trying to keep my head above water with no help, and a husband that actually made things worse. It was so fun today to make that payment to MBNA and see the balance transferred from Chase, and see myself having a decent savings balance. Is this the board where everyone was setting up an ING account? I think I should do that so I can't see my savings just sitting there.


~leanne
~leanne
deciding to be happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect, but that you had decided to look beyond the imp
Good for you!!