I’ve had several milestones in my life:
- Graduating from college
- Taking my first job in IT (which really has had a very significant impact on my life)
- Moving to Philadelphia
- Blogging professionally for the first time
Today marks another milestone: I no longer have any credit card debt. Ok, so that’s not REALLY true. I still have a balance on my Amazon credit card but that’s by design. Everything I buy from Amazon goes on that Amazon card because I get double reward points for each Amazon purchase. Once I get enough points Amazon sends me a $25 gift certificate in the mail, so I would be a fool not to use the card. The key, though, is that I pay off the balance in its entirety at the end of each month.
Where do I get off saying that I no longer have any credit card debt when I clearly have some? Because I finally paid off the last of the balance on my Citibank card. What’s so important about that? For some reason Citibank gave me a ridiculous deal a few years ago: a very, very low interest rate on balance transfers and a very high credit limit. I took advantage of this to combine all my credit card debt (spread over 3 cards) onto one, so I only had one bill to pay since I’m a lazy man. The clear benefit being that over time I wouldn’t be paying as much in interest on my debt but the greater benefit, which was entirely unexpected to me, was seeing that big old number in the balance column. That made me really want to get rid of the debt once and for all, and that I did today.
It feels great.
The only question is, what do I spend all my money on now? I hear Citigroup stock is a real bargain nowadays.
5 responses to “Out of consumer debt”
That’s great news! Magda and I are working on this as we speak and we are making great progress. Congrats Scott and keep up the great work.
We just paid off a Citibank debt this month, too. Over the time we’ve had that debt, I’ve become more and more concerned about owing them in particular money, so I can totally relate.
its a good time to buy a house….
If you have creditcard debt then it could be smart to talk to your bank and see if you can put it in to a “normal” loan often the rates are a lot lower.
But congrats and hope you spend you money wisely.
Start a rainy day fund with CD’s that mature incrementally. Yeah, the interest rate is poor, but it’s stable and you can always sink them into Roth IRA’s or some other investment when things stabilize. I’m keen on some Ford stock right now because it is real cheap. If I had bought the 100 shares I wanted to last week I’d have made $100!!!