Hello-
Time for another look at how much credit card debt I still have left to pay off. I’ve been focusing my efforts and extra payments on my Universal Card since it has a special 6 month promotion of 9.9% on my balances that do not have a special rate. After the six months is over, the rate jumps back up to 15.9% or so depending on the LIBOR rate.
So after that happens, I am thinking about transferring the balance to my Discover Card which increased my credit limit to $10,000 and has a short balance transfer offer of 4.9% for 6 months and then it goes to the standard rate of 15.9% APR after that.
I also got a nice rate increase letter from my Chase card this month. They are not happy with the profitability of my account so they want to raise my rates to 19.99%. Since I am not a profitable customer because I pay all my bills on time and do not give them the pleasure of charging me late fees or over the limit fees or any other crap fees they can think of. So I have to write them a letter and opt out of their high rate offer and keep the special lifetime balance transfer offers I have with them at 3 and 4% APR.
And there are rumblings that USAA is increasing rates too for a lot of their customers to improve profitability of their credit cards but I have not received a letter yet so let’s cross our fingers. If USAA does increase its rates on my card, I will have to opt out of that too and I will be left with my Discover Card as the only one I can use.
So one way or another, I will not be able to use plastic in the near future at all. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Since I used those plastic cards too much to get in a mountain of debt in the first place.
Enough about that, let’s take a look at my current credit card debt for Feb 2009:
AT&T Universal Card: $9697.17
USAA: $10,167.73
Bank Of America: $16,057.08
Chase: $13,947.29
Discover Card: $0.00000000000000!
Add it all up and you finally get under $50,000! $49,869.27
Total credit card debt started with: $62124 Feb 2008
Total credit card debt paid off in last 12 months: $12,254.
My income went up in Jan so I should be able to make a few extra payments in big chunks to take a nice bite out of my Universal Card so I can stop paying so much in interest charges each month.
Thanks for reading,
Adam
The Credit Blogger