The Nest

UPDATE! FIRST ZERO BALANCE!

Posted Friday, March 07, 2008 11:40 AM

Wow, it feels really good to say that! In September, we consolidated all of our bills between two low interest credit cards and a home equity line of credit. The card we just paid off started at $19,695.00, and it’s now paid in full! We were really aggressive with that one because the 1.9% APR on balance transfers was set to expire at the end of April, at which time it would have gone back up to 19%. We have still been paying down the other bills as well, and since June 30^th, we have paid off just over $31,000!

It hasn’t been fun, but we’ve managed. We had a few slip ups, but I think that’s normal. DH doesn’t like keeping cash in the house, so we made the horrible mistake of going back to the credit cards instead of the cash/envelope system. We both thought we were doing really good until the end of the month statement came and we were $1500 over budget. WTF? Guess what? Straight back to the envelopes we went.

I’ve had days where I looked into my closet and practically threw a fit because I wanted to go buy new clothes. I ranted and raved for a few minutes, and when it was all out of my system, I reminded myself that a baby is more important than a pair of pants, and there will be no baby until the debt is gone. Thank god I saved the stash of the gift cards I got for Christmas. Those came in really handy when I actually needed to buy a few things. I still have a few left that I’ve tucked away for now.

The winter is especially hard, thank god it’s almost over. You can’t spend too much time out in the cold. We take the dogs to the dog park every weekend for a few hours each day, but what to do with the rest of the time? You get bored with staying in the house. You think, maybe I’ll go see a movie? Then you do the math $20 for two tickets. Do we really want to see it that bad? How about the museums? Roughly the same price for the movie tickets, plus the cost of the train tickets into the City ($15 per person round trip). No, scratch that. The dinosaur bones will still be there when we are debt free. I got it! We’ll do some home projects! Hmmm, wait a second. The paint costs more than the movie tickets, not to mention we need new brushes, roller covers and tape. How about walking around the mall? We’ll leave all of the credit cards and cash home and it won’t cost us anything? But then you realize exactly what you are missing out on buying and it puts you in a foul mood. Never mind. The only things you can do is clean, watch tv, and clean again. Anyone want to come and eat off of my kitchen floors? I guarantee you they are cleaner than the plates in most restaurants.

Ah, yes. Restaurants. We have gone out to dinner a few times, but we try to really limit it. Complete deprivation with fun is like complete deprivation with a diet. You have to allow yourself cheat days here and there or you wind up going on a god-awful binge. So, we agreed to a nice dinner out once a month. The rest of the time, we cook at home. It’s really funny how being in debt pay-off mode can change your eating habits when you do go out. Before, we’d order what we wanted; drinks, appetizers, main courses, desserts. We’d wind up either throwing away what we didn’t eat, or bringing it home to sit in the refrigerator for days. Now when we go out, we skip the appetizers and dessert and cut back on the drinks we order. We still get a great meal out, but aren’t throwing food (and money) down the drain.

As frustrating as it’s been, the one thing we haven’t done is fight about money. We know where we are, where we want to be, and what we need to do to get there. There are still days when it seems impossible, but, back in June I didn’t think we’d ever pay off $31,000 in nine months. We are just going to keep chipping away at the balances and watch the overall numbers get lower each month. I’m still confident that we will have this all paid off by Fall of 2010. Of course, sooner would be nice, but we’ll keep taking it one step at a time and see how it goes.