<$Tuesday, August 28, 2007$>
When just enough is good enough
| Blogging revenue is starting to trickle in. It's not a huge amount by any means, but it is encouraging. Between that and yesterday's revelation about ING Direct's subaccounts, I now have an action plan in place for tackling my credit card debt, and that plan is this: Every time I get paid via Paypal for ad-blogging, I shall go directly to Paypal and transfer that payment, however small, into my new "Debt Reduction" subaccount at ING. Then, at the end of every week, I shall move whatever amount is in there into my checking account and fire off an e-check to my credit card company. These micropayments will, of course, be on top of the minimum payment, which will still come out of my regular paycheck. But now I don't have to worry about tightening the belt in other areas of my budget in order to make additional payments on the principal, to which I say: Yay! I'm also trying out a new philosophy on debt elimination. We've got the "no more acquiring debt" part down pretty well (at least, we do again since I cut off our Buyer Credit account and linked my Paypal debit card back to my bank account for backup funding). I think the debt snowball is a brilliant plan. I want to be debt-free, and the sooner the better. BUT: Extreme cost-cutting measures will still mean that it will take at least three years to eliminate our credit card balances. Three years of scrimping and foregoing vacations and feeling guilty about every unnecessary purchase. I just can't live that way for a sustained amount of time, and neither can my husband. And you know what? It's okay if it takes another year or two to get rid of those credit cards. It just won't make that much difference in the long run. Sure, it will cost us more in interest, and that bites, but it doesn't really mean that much to us in a practical, day-to-day setting. So my new goal is to find a balance. To find a point of spending vs. saving vs. debt reduction wherein we're comfortable and have a certain amount of enjoyment in life. As long as we're making progress in the latter two areas, we don't have to wrack ourselves with guilt or completely deny ourselves in the former. This isn't to say I'm going to go out and buy us a Wii, or stop trying to reign in our food spending, or anything like that. It just means I'm going to relax a little and stop constantly worrying and wondering what more I could do. I'm doing enough. All I need to do is hang in there. Labels: credit cards, money management |
