Money Diet: Part 1

Could you tell how tired I was yesterday? I was horrified with how many typos I had in that post! I went back and corrected them (at least I hope I found them all) but yikes. As my husband put it so delicately, I have officially entered the phase where no sleep position is comfortable. Oh well.

Now, on to more important things.

I took two steps toward our money diet today. First, after debating for months, we finally decided to let go of my husband's cell phone. He gets one through work and he uses it almost exclusively. Last month he did not spend a single minute online with his phone and sent only 60 texts. I thought this would be saving us $15 a month, turns out we are actually saving $30! Whoo hoo! I realize not a lot, but every little bit helps.

I am still paying more than I would like for my own individual plan and am searching for a better deal. But considering Verizon is available pretty much everywhere and I have always been happy with my service, I am reluctant to jump ship (yet!) I will keep you posted.

Second, I transferred our credit card balance. As I noted earlier, we put all of our home improvements from last summer when our bathroom had to be redone because of mold, on a 0% card. What I didn't realize is that if we used the card we would be accruing interest and there was no way to get rid of the interest unless we paid the whole thing in full -- still not an option. What I mean by this is, assume I transferred $2000 and then spent $200. I assumed if I sent in a payment of $300, the first $200 would go toward the new charges and the $100 would go toward the $2000, thus making my balance $1900. Wrong!

So I transferred the balance again (which I do not like, but like better than paying interest on purchases I thought I was paying off) and now have a 0% deal for 18 months! I will not be using this card at all -- I guess the good thing is that I was able to transfer to an existing account and not a new one.

The lesson learned: make sure you understand all the terms of your credit card. I know this sounds stupid and if you had asked me even last week I would have assumed I did. I was wrong. I shudder to think of how much interest we paid this card before I caught the charges...ugh.

Today was the first day I had to implement changes, so stay tuned for more updates on our money diet.