New Cards, Old Cards
August 22nd, 2007I was anticipating having to call about one of our credit cards yesterday, but the bill showed up before I did. We’ve had problems before living in apartments with credit card companies neglecting to put the apartment number on, and then the mail being returned, and then them sending it to my ILs house and them forgetting to give it to us…and late fees….and so on. Of course, I still don’t actually have the card itself, which I will be calling about, but at this point, really more worried about the bill.
I was pleasantly surprised when the bill arrived to us, on time and to the right place. Our intent since it’s a lo-balance credit card, that I basically just signed up for to get 10% off the XBox 360 is to do a credit card balance transfer from that card to my business card, so instead of it having a 23% interest it will have 0%…and it will thusly be paid off, another good mark against our credit.
This is all in the fact that we constantly compare credit cards against each other. My business card has the highest spending limit, but also the highest payment, unlike the rest each time the balance goes up the minimum payment goes up. My husband’s card’s minimum payment has been stuck at $35 from it being $1000 on there to now almost $3000 with the purchase of the car on it. This new card has $500 on it, what were they asking for payment? $10! I couldn’t believe it $10 and the interest is 23% there’s a great way to ruin my finances right there. I guess they have to make up for the 10% discount.
Thankfully I never just pay minimum payment. I try to pay double if I can, if not at least $20 more. Although thinking about it I’ve been paying $100 on my husband’s card, and the payment asked is $35, so that’s almost triple. Really, it depends on how much money we have…but never, never do I just do minimums because I’ve seen what that does. I’ve had a friend who was basically juggling her balances backwards and forwards across two, and then three cards, because she kept just absolutely having to buy something. Not even freshman year in college and she was declaring bankruptcy…
August 22nd, 2007 at 11:04 pm
We’ve juggled credit cards lots of times – moving the balance to get the lowest rate for the longest time. My intent was always to get them paid off, though and not to live on credit. I hope my kids never get into the credit card debt situation. Ever.
Ok, this has nothing to do with credit cards, but I’ve tagged you for the middle name meme. Have you done it yet? Since your tag to my Live Journal never showed up, I thought I’d try again. And then I forgot to close my tag!
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I wish that we didn’t have this credit card debt, but when we were living at the old apartment it was pretty much hand-to-mouth. There were several times that if it wasn’t for the cards we would have not been able to pay some of our bills…now that we’re at a much cheaper apartment I was hoping that we would be able to save some money but…we have this hospital bill…at least I’m still being able to make higher than minimum payments.
Thank you for the tag. I hadn’t done it yet. I’m glad for the tag. I hope things show up properly.