Joy799's Personal Finance Blog

I am attempting to do the following once again: Keep strict records of every cent that I spend every day. Pay down the credit card debt until it's gone, then not use the credit cards for an entire year. Save money to pay for my college courses and books.
There are other things that I need to do as well, but I'll just have to work on the emergency fund goal and work on paying back my mom and boyfriend all that I owe them at a later date.
I have to pay my tuition/books $650 by the end of August..I've been able to stick back $200 toward that goal.

Yaah!! I had my taxes filed today, I will be getting enough back to pay off Ivy tech plus have a decent amount left over to fund my emergency fund. I really should pay back my mom some of what I owe her too. I was thinking about my money issues today and I've decided to start a tuition fund as soon as I can so I won't have to scrounge around at the last minute to pay that late.
Can't wait till I get my refund check, hope it'll be closer to the 8 days instead of 15 days.

It's been a rough start to the new year and I've made zero progress with any of my debt, I even had to borrow more money from family to cover some bills I couldn't pay. So now I owe more money to my mom and BF, which makes me feel really crummy. I got a medical bill in the mail, I'll just have to pay that off in small chunks. I still don't have the tuition money I need for school yet, but I'll just have to tighten down on my spending to be able to scrape it up.
Hopefully next month and March will be better.

I was able to pay $110 to credit card 2, so the new total is $185.48...so hopefully in another month or two that one will be history.

I am having problems keeping track of my spending again, so I've decided to start keeping track of it on this blog.

December 1st Total $0 NSD

December 2nd Total $73.25 Groceries and lunch at Ivy Tech

December 3rd Total $9.50 soda on break and some grocery items.

December 4th Total $!.00 soda at Ivy Tech

December 5th Total $8.31 bad splurge breakfast + coffee at Mcdonalds

December 6th Total $1.25 soda at work

December 7th Total $14.00 cough medicine
and trip to clinic, but got free samples of antibiotic.

I need to get my paycheck like tommorrow but it won't hit the bank until Thursday, so I'll just have to tough it out, The last time I checked the balance was $2.06 but I do have some cash on me to make it till then.
I still don't feel ready for xmas, but this paycheck is our xmas bonus check so it will all work out.

It's not even December yet and I'm already stressing out over christmas spending, I should have paid off those credit cards long before now, I have already cut way back on my holiday spending versus last year. I'm only buying 1 present per family member this year and limiting the amount to $25.
I am just going to have to pay off the cc's slower than I want to, like a $100 chunk at a time, also there is the tuition bill I have due around January 11, so that's another $325 I have to scrounge up somewhere.
I wrote out a budget for 2009, so if I stick to that all year long I will be in much better shape financially and be ready for the holidays next year without stressing out so much. I gave myself until March to pay off the credit card debt and start really saving for the emergency fund.

I checked out the website for Venture bank, it sounds like one of those too good to be true things...does anyone know anything about them?

I had plans to pay off the lowest cc first, then I called to double check on what the interest rates were on each of them, the highest cc had 29%...so I followed my boyfriends advice and get that one paid off first. It feels good to do that, but I will have to be extremely careful about spending for 2 weeks till the next paycheck comes in.
The last week was rough too my poor, pitiful checking account only had $2.62 in it, after the large cc payment and the $45 cell phone bill hits it, there won't be much left in it this time either. I do have a extra $20 left over after buying groceries though that I can stick in there.
I have decided to cancel the cc that had the interest rate of 29%, I am thinking also of canceling the other two cc's that I have too. I need some advice about that...is it a good or bad idea to have no credit cards at all?

I counted up what was in the jar of loose change and it totaled up to $50 some odd bucks.

I hope to pay my three credit cards off over the next three months.
I'm going to pay Mastercard $237.03 in the middle of November. Then pay Mastercard $249.79 in the middle of December, and finally pay $355.66 to Visa in January.

After that I need to really start working hard on setting up and saving money into an emergency fund. I will not be entirely debt free until m car loan is paid off, but I feel okay about that because it's the first car loan I have ever had.

I started really keeping track of my spending about a month ago, so I am going to keep up with doing that from now on. I made a really big change in the way I think about money, it still seems to slip out of my grib far too easily but I am working really hard on changing that.

credit card 1 $355.66
credit card 2 $249.79
credit card 3 $237.03