The Credit Blogger

Hello-

It’s that time of the month, the time when I talk about my credit card debt and let you know how much longer until I am debt free.  Here is my credit card debt report for December 2008.  I am only a few payments away from getting my Discover Card totally paid off.  I just sent in another $21 payment on my $518 balance.  I am so looking forward to getting this card paid off.

I am thinking about switching to a Discover Motiva Card where they give you a credit every 6 months of one month of interest charges if you make all your payments on time.

Then, I can transfer the balance of my stupid AT&T Universal Card to it and get those bastards out of my hair.

Here’s what I owe:

Bank of America: $16267.64

Stupid AT&T: $10342.02

Chase: $14292.01

USAA: $10187.33

Discover: $518, with pending $21 payment.

Total Credit Card Debt for December 2008: $51,607.

Total Credit Card Debt for November 2008: $52915.05

Total Credit Card debt as of September 2008: $54,154

Difference from November: $1308.05

Total Credit Card Debt Started with: $62124 Feb 2008

Total Credit Card Debt Paid Off: $10517.

Pretty cool, I’ve paid off over $10,000 in credit card debt this year.  Just realized that as I put it in the calculator and typed it up.  Hopefully, I will accelerate how fast I can pay this debt off and get maybe $25,000 more paid off next year.  And then get it all paid off by 2010. That’s the goal.

Be credit card debt free by July 2010 and buy a new one story house with a library and big walk around veranda and a new dark blue Toyota Tacoma.

Thanks for reading!

-Adam

The Credit Blogger

Hello-

It’s almost time for Thanksgiving and I got a big thank you from my AT&T Universal Card – “Your interest rates are going up!  Thanks for being a great customer.  We don’t earn enough money off of you charging 18% interest so we want to charge you 24.99%!”  We sure do appreciate your business.

FUCK YOU AT&T Universal Card!

I just got a letter from them saying they wanted to change my terms and interest rates.  First they cut my credit limit now this.  I never miss a payment.  I always pay on time to all my credit cards.  My total credit card debt is going down which means I am a less risky customer but yet they feel the need to charge me more money.  WTF?!?!?

This is how you reward your customers?

I have the right to opt out and not accept these crap terms and then I’ll be able to pay off the balance at the current terms which isn’t the greatest deal – I have an outstanding balance of $10,582 and change, $7,103 is at a rate of 18.26% which comes out to about $110 in interest charges each month and $3,527 is at a rate of 4.99% which comes out to about $15 in interest charges each month.

My minimum payment is $230 and $125 of that goes to interest each month and you want to charge me more interest?  I say it again:

FUCK YOU AT&T Universal Card!

And the card is run by Citibank so I guess that explains a lot.  Since they are failing and cannot do anything right they want to take their customers down with them.  It’s no wonder their stock has lost billions of dollars over the past few months.

On the brighter side, I just made a $356 payment on my Discover Card and my balance will now be down to almost $500!!!!  Only a couple more payments and it will all be paid off for good!

It’s funny, one credit card is trying to raise my rates – stupid AT&T Universal Card – and now Discover is sending me low interest balance transfer offers.  Maybe I’ll just transfer the balance to Discover and avoid paying AT&T any more money than I have to since this is how they reward their on time paying customers.

How risky can I be if I’m trying to solve my credit card debt problem by writing a blog about it and writing all about my financial problems for all to see?

Enough of that today.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  Except you AT&T Universal Card!

-Adam

The Credit Blogger

Hello-

Just a quick update to post my credit card balances for November 2008.

Discover Card: $1096.18 with $34.90 payment pending.

USAA: $10,300.88.

ATT: $10,456.90.

Chase: $14,470.45.

Bank of America: $16,590.64.

Total Credit Card Debt for November 2008: $52915.05

Total Credit Card debt as of September 2008: $54,154

Difference of: $1238.95

Total Credit Card Debt Started with: $62124 Feb 2008

Total Credit Card Debt Paid Off: $9208.95

How long until I am debt free?  Who knows.  Hopefully in 2-3 years.

That’s all for now.

-Adam

The Credit Blogger

Hello-

Way too damn long!

Just got an email from my Discover Card saying my new statement was available and the minimum payment due is only $37.  Cannot remember the last time I had a minimum payment due of only $37.

So I take a longer look at my statement and see that of that $37, about $21 would be going to interest each month.

Now that’s a great deal if you are the credit card company.  But it sucks if you are the consumer who is trying to pay off your credit card balance.

So I went over to one of the free credit card payment calculators to see just how long it would take me to pay that sucker off if I just made the minimum payment of $37.

And here’s what it gave me: “It will take you 146 months to be rid of your debt. In that time, you will pay $1,138.47 in interest.

If you devoted $36.53 to your debt every month, it would be paid off in 51 months, and would cost you $536.29 in interest.”

So it’ll take me 146 months to pay off my $1300 balance and I’ll pay $1100 in interest charges! FUCK!

Man that just makes me want to open a bank.  I should make an offer to buy Wells Fargo or WaMU!  How the heck are you ever supposed to get out of a mountain of credit card debt if you pay $37 as a minimum payment and $21 of that goes to interest charges each month?

The answer is that you are NOT!!!!

Don’t even think about a late fee or any other type of fee.

Those usually run $39 each time and that will each up about 4 months of principal payments.

So you know what to do: pay much more than the minimum if you ever want to lift the burdens of too much credit card debt off your shoulders.

On the bright side, you can see that I made over $600 worth of payments last month on my Discover Card balance so know I only owe $1314.  Hopefully I can have that sucker paid off by the end of the year.

That’s all for today.

Have a debt-free day!

-Adam

The Credit Blogger