$30k in debt GONE in 1 year.
Posts tagged credit card debt
Zero Debt Progress – October 3, 2010
Oct 3rd
Hi everyone! I have some ups and downs with my zero debt progress, but thankfully, a couple of more ups than downs.
First of all, I just updated my stats. Our arch enemy card is finally paid off! (Well, the payment is on the way!) Yay! We are going to call this one up, cancel it and then rip it to shreds. That also means another 2k has been paid. We are getting there!!
On the downside…
One of my cats had to go to kitty emergency the other day. He has an enlarged heart and fluid on his lungs. 
But with his hospital stay, plus his medications, that ran up one of my cards $1k.
And on the upside…
Looks like we qualify to refinance our house again, and not only will that save us $200 / month, but we also don’t have to pay for 2 months of mortgage, and we get our escrow back which is another couple thousand!
This means that we shouldn’t have to struggle so much during Christmas, AND we’re going to try and put the rest of that extra income toward to credit cards.
We’re going to be really close to paying these guys off by the end of this year.
So, looks like I could still make my goal date. Maybe even sooner than I had planned! 
We’ll see what other ups and downs are in store for us.
I’m excited to share everything that’s been happening with us. Thanks for reading!
Zero Debt Progress – Finally Some REAL Progress!!!
Sep 19th
Yes! Today is a great day. I was finally able to update my stats. We officially paid off $13,134 in credit card debt as of today. Let me just say…WOOOOO HOOOOOO!
And there’s more to come. We plan to pay off our “arch nemesis” card (which is about $3k) as soon as it comes in, and then we’ll have about $8k of 401k money after that. We’ll come up with a plan at that point once we see what’s what.
I’ll certainly keep you posted.
Now, this doesn’t mean that my affiliate marketing goals have stopped. In fact, I have more motivation than ever, and new goals to accomplish.
I am ready.
I have been writing articles, finding new products to promote, updating my datafeedr store site, and my Niche Blogger site. I’m on a roll again. Pretty soon all my credit card debt will be paid off, and I’ll be bringing in significant monthly income. THAT is the real goal. Then we can breathe and enjoy life.
Thanks for reading! Come back soon.
Zero Debt Progress – September 17, 2010
Sep 17th
Well, here we are again! I just wanted to keep you all updated. We received the 401k money, and you know what? I already feel some relief. My husband and I were talking about which bills we want to get rid of first. “Get rid of” is a little weak. It’s more like kill, slaughter, murder, annihilate…well, you see what I’m saying. I really want to chuck those credit cards.
There are two schools of thoughts here. #1. take out the cards with the highest APR. You get more bang for your buck here and save more in the end. #2. take out the lowest cards first. That gives your motivation and momentum a boost, which allows you to KEEP GOING.
You know? Both methods of getting rid of credit car debt are good. It’s really just about which way would benefit you most.
For us, I think it’ll be a bit of a combination.
There’s one card that we just can’t wait to pay off and close forever. It’s not the highest APR, nor the highest payment, but it’s our biggest nemesis.
It’s us vs. the Chase card.
And we’re about to win.
Then there’s a few big cards to deal with.
Big meaning big payments due.
We have a card with $11k, a card with $13k and a card with $7k. Sucks, right?
The plan right now is to demolish the nemesis card ($3k), the highest APR card ($7k) and the $13k card.
And possibly half of the last card ($11k).
We need to leave a little breathing room for taxes, Christmas and other things.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. We’re totally not paying off these cards in the way that I planned like Amy Bass did. By internet marketing.
And I get that. That’s what I wanted to do. And I’m still focusing on that. But right now, it’s not what’s going to save us.
I’m OK with that.
I think once we get some of these cards off our back, we’ll experience this great relief, and that will help us to allow more money to come into our lives.
Listen, this is not over for me. Not even close.
I am more focused than ever. I have new goals set, and I’m ready to achieve them.
I don’t just want to not worry about money, I want to have enough to really, truly enjoy life. That’s what we’re supposed to do. I really feel life is supposed to be fun.
We’re getting there. All of us!
Zero Debt Progress – August 25, 2010
Aug 25th
Wow, time sure does fly, right? Every time I turn around, another couple of weeks have gone by. My son is about to start Kindergarten, and my daughter is starting pre-school soon. It’s so amazing that I’ve gotten to spend the last year and a half with them and I hope I get to spend so much more good, quality time with them.
But whatever happens in life, you just have to go with it. Go with the flow and let the stream lead you to the most amazing things in your life.
Well, that’s my speech for the day. Thanks, and good night!
OK, I know I promised I would mention some major things happening behind the scenes here.
Some ways that we can pay off our credit card debt.
Let me warn you though, this solution isn’t going to be very pretty.
But, I think we can do it. Or come REALLY close. $34,000. Gone. Would you do it?
The first step is to take out my 401k. It’s exactly what every expert says not to do. But are the experts in my shoes? We are losing tons of money every month with credit card debt.
The goal is zero debt.
We will need to do whatever we can to get there. We’re paying something like $550 / month in credit card debt. That’s a lot of money!!!
We understand the penalties and taxes that will happen with using my 401k, but that’s why I said it’s not going to be pretty.
Step #2 is taking out some extra money we had saved up for the kids.
Yes, I wish that my kids have a great head start. But we want to make sure we’re ALL safe and secure and one of the best ways to do that is to take out this debt. The money for them is sitting in a savings account making NOTHING while we’re getting killed with 20 – 30% APRs.
Not pretty.
But it’s something that we can do to get rid of the debt.
And we plan to pay the kids’ money back – with interest. (How? Well, there are lots of other back-up plans to take care of this. It WILL be paid back. It has to be.)
The 401K money will be built up again. It was DOWN due to my last company’s departure from the business world. (AKA, they went out of business. LOL)
BTW, my husband still has his 401k, and we’ll keep that one going.
Life doesn’t fit into a perfect story. If it did, that story would be pretty boring, right? So sometimes you have to do things that the “experts” would frown upon. Sometimes you just have to go with what you feel is the right thing to do.
Sorry experts, but you’re going to lose this one.
And maybe you’ll be right down the road. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. I have to deal with this moment right now. I’ll deal with the future when it comes.
We all have our different paths in life. And that’s perfectly OK. In fact, that’s perfectly perfect. It’s good for all of us to have different paths. It makes life interesting.
And, in the end, I KNOW it’ll all work out – for all of us.
My Zero Debt Progress – May 26, 2010
May 26th
Well, what do you know? It’s almost the end of May. Sheesh. I guess I feel like grumbling right now. Sales are WEAK this month so far. I’ve had a few frustrating things happen with my sites:
Site #1 is doing OK, making some sales. But the merchant closed down his site for a few days. I really hope it’s going to be back up soon! I feel like I’m missing out on sales.
Site #2 has a pretty good amount of traffic, somewhere between 70-100 per day, and I’m getting tons of clicks but NO SALES!! That one hurts.
Site #3 is in the #3 spot on Google for my main KW. Google says the term gets 130,000 hits a month. I got 14 visitors today. (130,000 visitors – HA!) And none of the 14, and none of the previous 100 or so visitors, clicked on my affiliate link. None. 0. Zilch. Zip.
But, all you can do is move on!
Now, the good thing is I am still doing my consulting work. So that’s an extra $700 / month at this point (it could be more eventually) to put toward these credit card bills. And that’s guaranteed money, which is nice since affiliate marketing is FAR from guaranteed.
After talking with my husband, he thinks we can really take a good chunk of money out of one of our credit cards, but unfortunately, not until next month.
I’m just going to keep collecting until then and then hopefully we can almost completely remove one credit card from our lives. (The one we want to get next has got to be closed down FOREVER! I can’t wait for that.)
Ok guys, thanks for reading. Keep coming back. Sometimes I’m slow at this, but I AM getting there.
My Zero Debt Progress – May 19, 2010
May 19th
Wow! Where does the time go? It feels like I just wrote yesterday, but it’s been 5 days already. I don’t have a *whole* lot to update here, but I do have a few things.
1. I now have access to Month 2′s The Niche Blogger content. I’ve been going through it, and of course, it’s great! I just love how detailed the instructions are.
Now, what I need to do is catch up on my blog posts for The Niche Blogger site I’m working on! Yikes, I’m really behind. And I’m behind because I’ve been busy with…
2. Consulting work! I just started doing some part-time email consulting work. I get to do it from home, so it’s awesome! And it’s an extra several hundred a month that I can put toward my credit card debt.
3. More consulting work! I picked up a little extra consulting work from this site I belong to called HireMyMom.com. This site is cool. It’s a membership site where moms (and probably dads too! I don’t think they actually care) can search for REAL work from home jobs. It’s almost like Monster for moms.
I also had a decent week with affiliate marketing sales.
Every little bit counts and can go towards paying off this debt! We should be writing out bills soon, so I’ll update you on any amount that we’re able to pay off.
My Zero Debt Progress – March 24, 2010
Mar 24th
Well, yesterday we were able to write out a check to completely pay off one of our credit card bills. Woo hoo! So we have one down. It was the smallest one, but it felt good.
Even though I started in the middle of the month, I’ll just update everything at the end of the month. So you’ll have to wait for the new tally until then. I know you’re on the edge of your seat. LOL.
As far as what I’m currently up to with Internet marketing, I decided that it’s best to work on my datafeedr stores first because I pay a month fee for those stores. So, some things I did with that recently are:
- Redid my store with updated categories
- Put 3 articles into Notorious Blog Poster
- Created a Squidoo
And good news…Notorious Blog Poster is starting to work. My site was at #69 in Google last week, and now one of my indexed pages is up to #27! I’m actually going to let this one simmer for a little bit and come back to another few days.
I have another datafeedr store out there currently too. I can share that one with you, it’s UpliftKids.com. It’s a positive parenting blog and online parenting store. This one isn’t really a niche site, it’s more general. I focus on the keyword phrase “positive parenting”, but that’s a highly competitive keyword.
So for this one, I just keep my store updated, send out some articles and post on the blog. I probably need a better plan to drive traffic than I currently have.
Next up is another store I want to create. I have a Squidoo campaign that currently points directly to the merchant’s page. What I want to do is set up a store site and then point my Squidoos to that site instead. The good thing is that I already have some traffic. This is going to be a bit of an experiment as I already make a pretty good amount each month from the e-book and physical products I sell through Amazon on Squidoo. I hope I’m not messing up a good thing!
I also currently work on another campaign that I have out there. I have a bunch of articles out for this one, and currently only 1 Squidoo. So, I want to increase the amount of Squidoo pages I have and basically follow One Week Marketing with this one.
Well, that’s the plan for now! I have to take my kids to the park now before we all get a little stir crazy.
The Final Tally – YIKES!
Mar 22nd
We just got the last credit card bill in the mail. And yea, this was a big one. So, the final amount is…
$34,579
Yup, that’s bad. Our total minimum payments due equal out to $584. That is a lot of money. And that’s JUST the minimum payment.
Well, all we can do is the best that we can and take it one card at a time. And one day at a time.
It’s time for Operation Zero Debt
Mar 12th
What’s this site about?
Well, my husband and I got ourselves into some credit card debt. I think it’s over $30k now, but we’re going to calculate everything and post the actual amount here. This is the first time I’m putting that number out there. I want to put it out there to let others they aren’t alone, and I also want to make sure I hold myself accountable.
So while it’s embarrassing to admit how much debt we have, I feel good about what we’re about to do.
How did I think of doing this?
I got the inspiration to do this from another blog called MyDebtFreeGoal.com. Amy Bass is the woman who started this blog. At the time, she had close to $73k in debt and wanted to pay it off in two years. She did it in LESS than two years! And, she had 3 kids at the time and was pregnant with her 4th. (Now she has 5.) If she can do it, so I can I!
(Thanks to Jennifer Ledbetter (A.K.A. PotPieGirl) for the link to Amy’s site!)
About Me
I am a mom with two kids. A boy who’s almost 5 and a girl who’s almost 3. They keep me busy! Which makes working from home very interesting and challenging. But, challenges are what life’s all about, right? I was laid off from my job in February 2009 (from a credit card company! LOL) and thought of it as a great opportunity to pursue my dream of working from home. I have been doing the Internet Marketing thing since about May 2009.
My Plan
Well, my plan, just like Amy’s, is to continue working online and making money that way. Working online is amazing for so many reasons. But the biggest ones are that I can do it from home with my kids and I’m not on anyone else’s schedule, and the more you build it up, the more residual, recurring income you build up. Which means, once I eliminate the credit card debt, money will continue to flow in more and more and there won’t be a lot of maintenance for a lot of it.
I plan to send a payment whenever I have one to whatever card we decide to focus on first. I don’t plan to wait until a bill is due. Maybe I’ll confuse the credit card companies that way too. LOL.
Timeline
My goal is to completely wipe out our credit card debt by March 12, 2011. Exactly one year from now.
Start Date: 3.12.10 