Finding Freedom

I spent the weekend at home with my parents and grandparents.  It was wonderfully relaxing, and, as most weekends spent at home often are, it was full of delicious food.

One thing that my parents and I talked about was the fact that I was a little worried about my car, as it seemed to have a slow oil leak.  My parents suggested that, before my car got too much worse, I should trade my car in while it still had some trade in value and get either a used or new car that didn’t have that problem.

This got me thinking.  While it would certainly be exciting to have a new car, I didn’t think that the prospect of having another set of bills to pay would be the best choice given my current situation.  I don’t think that the situation with my car is serious enough to warrant getting another car just yet, and I suspect that if I keep on eye on my oil level, I can keep the issue from getting out of hand.

I guess that this shows that I’m getting a little bit better with my spending.  I hope that I continue in that same direction.

Most likely if you are interested in personal financial stability, you are already a little bit wary of credit cards.  I thought that I would chime in a bit about one of my credit cards that is a pain in my butt.

I picked up my Aspire Visa a while ago, when I was still spending much more than I should have been.  When I realized how high my balance had climbed, I figured that I could just make several payments a month, and that would bring the balance down to an acceptable level (i.e. zero).  However, the kind folks over at Aspire Visa have decided that they are going to do their best to keep interest building on the credit card by using two schemes:

1)  Part of the agreement with the credit card is that the customer can only make three payments every ninety days.  This means that I can only, essentially, make one payment a month, or else I will be risking late payment fees somewhere down the line just because I was trying to pay off the darn thing.  I feel that this is especially pernicious of this company because all of my other credit cards allow me to make payments anywhere from exceptionally frequently (Discover lets me make a payment every three or four days if I want to) to reasonably frequently (My Bank of America balance transfer lets me make four payments a month).

2)  If I opt to pay online, the site charges me a fee of $4.95.  This also makes the payment process more difficult as I really don’t have the convenience/reasonable customer service option of being able to pay online, since I don’t want to give them any more money than I absolutely have to.

In short, I suspect that many of you would have looked over their customer agreement and decided not to go with them in the first place.  However, should you still be on the fence, I suggest that you go with some other credit card.

So here I am, trying to be a reasonable person and pay down my credit card bills, and the credit card companies (I’m looking at you Chase and Providian), after I make large-ish payments to them, decide that they are going to cut my credit lines.  While this makes good sense from a business standpoint for them (as I have obviously not had the best spending track record in the past), I can’t help but think that their cutting my credit lines is going to hurt my credit score, as my ratio of balance to credit limit is going to be higher.

When I noticed that Chase did this, I gave them a call right away, and they re-instated my credit line.  However, when Providian did this to me the other day, I called and they said that I needed to wait for a statement in the mail that would explain why it had happened.

I’m still pretty dead set about paying off the balances of all of my cards, but it’s discouraging to see that even though I’m doing my damndest to lower my balances and, therefore, to improve my credit score, it seems like the companies are doing their damndest to see that my credit score goes in the toilet.  Has anyone experienced anything like this with credit card companies?  Do I have any recourse?

Here’s my networth update for March.  I know that it’s a bit premature, but I’ve already paid all of my bills for March, so I thought that I’d stick the numbers in early, so that I could see where I am at.

I receive my bonus from work on the 23rd of this month.

This is something that I’ve been dreaming about for over a year.  My response to even hearing the word bonus is Pavlovian; my mouth salivates.

While it won’t be enough to eradicate my debt, it will certainly be enough to eliminate a double digit percentage of it, and that is certainly going to help me sleep better at night.  I can’t wait until my debt is all gone.

I recently received a card in the mail from Chase Manhattan Corp, with whom I have one of my credit cards.  The card had various pictures of what appeared to be groups of friends smiling at one another.  The inside of the card said something along the lines of, “Why don’t you take this opportunity to pay down some of the balance of your card?  A credit card that is close to its limit can reflect poorly on your credit score.  if you need help or credit counseling, feel free to call this toll-free number.”

By this, they of course meant, “Dear deadbeat, we’d like our money back, so please send us a check lest we send Vito and Tony over to your place to put various parts of your anatomy into vices.”

Sigh…I’m working on it, Chase.  Thanks for sending the pick-me-up.

As I am dealing with the self-made burden of slowly demolishing the credit card bill monolith, I’m always looking for painless ways to pay down the balance a little bit more quickly and painlessly.  One method that I have found to be particularly painless is simply adding a couple of dollars to the payment.

This was a bit burdensome at first, because I kind of enjoyed going through my past payments and seeing them all as rounded numbers, such as payments of $60 or $100.  However, I realized that when I added just a couple of dollars to each payment, that extra amount compounds over time, AND I don’t really miss the extra money.

For example, instead of simply paying $100, if I pay, say, $105, than over the course of a year, I will have paid off $60 more bucks than I would have paid off otherwise, and the extra amount is not large enough top throw the rest of my budget out of whack.

I think that the trick with anything that is difficult is to find some way to make yourself believe that it is simple.  I believe that this trick manages that.  At the very least, it is slowly helping me out from under the pile of debt.

Some of you may remember that I auditioned for a show in a professional theatre a few months ago.  I didn’t get the part, but, because I at first did not succeed, I tried, tried again, this time with a different but just as prestigious theatre in the area.

And I got a part.

Obviously I’m as pleased as punch, but one of the greatest things about this is that they will be paying me pretty well for my time and efforts.  While it would be quite difficult to live on just that income, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be able to keep my day job as well, which means that my income will go up by about a third.  When you consider that the most I have received for acting in the past was a stipend of $200 for the whole rehearsal process and run of the show, getting paid nearly twice that weekly is not only awesome, but also a tremendous verification that I’m getting closer to doing the right things with my life.

What the extra money means to me is that I’ll be able to pay down my debts that much more quickly while thoroughly improving my acting resume.  Plus, because I will essentially be working two jobs, I’ll have less time to spend any extra money, which will only add to savings.

Sometimes you just have to keep trying, you know?  There’s something to be said about perseverance.

Many of you have probably seen or heard the commercials for Cash Call; they seem to be Gary Coleman’s predominant method of making money right now.  On a whim I went over to their site to check them out. The site seems pretty legitimate; it almost seems like they are just looking to help people out who are down on their luck.

However, in examining what users have said about them, that help that they offer comes at a great price. While I suspected that their interest rates weren’t kind, but I had no idea that they were as bad as they are.

Many of the people are locked into loans with an interest of at least 85%. You read that right; eighty-five percent interest, and that seems to be at the very least.  Some poor people are locked in as high as 99%. 

Can you say preying on those least able to protect themselves? This is horrible, and it makes me sick.

As we all get older and older, a do-over is something that occurs less and less in our lives. As a child, if you serve poorly in four square for example, it is relatively easy to call “Do-Over!” and get another shot at it. As an adult, as much as I’d like to call Capital One and say claim the do-over principle, I think that it would not fall on very sympathetic ears.

This is why it is important to do the things that we have decided to do well.

Problogger is running a series of guest posts from fairly prolific bloggers that are all centered on the question, “What would you do differently if you were to start blogging all over again?”

I am finding this series very informative and educational, as I am very new to the blogging scene. Go give it a glance through; you never know what tips you might come away with.