WE DID IT!

As of September 25th, 2007, we have paid off a HUGE credit card and paid zero in interest! Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can barely believe it!

About 15 months ago, I began itching for some home renovations; namely the floors. Ours had the ugly, old, builder's grade carpet that had been installed from when the house was built! Ack! It was just terrible and had to be steam vacuumed every few months. I hated it! So, we found a flooring place that was offering 0% interest for 18 months and got the new hardwood floors installed. Yay! Until we read the fine print of our agreement...

18 months with 0% interest sounds like a fantastic deal, doesn't it? Did for us, too. When we read the fine print, however, we realized we were in a boatload of trouble! After the 18 months were over, the interest rate shoots up to 24%. Ya, that's pretty steep, but that wasn't the worst part of the whole deal. The interest was retroactive to the original amount and cumulative. In other words, even if we owed $1 at the end of the 18 month time period, we would owe interest on the original amount and they would tack on 24% every single month we were supposedly paying zero interest. H-O-L-Y S-M-O-K-E-S!!! I about died. Seriously.

So, we worked our tails off. We figured what we would need to pay every month to pay the credit card off by the 18 months. Then we decided we wanted a one month cushion just in case something happened one month. We figured the loan was due on Christmas Day (how fitting, huh?) and that we wanted it paid off by Thanksgiving. We divvied up the per month cost into weekly payments and come hell or high water, we stuck to paying them every single week. There were weeks I thought I was going to cry with money so tight. It was not a pleasant experience, let me tell you! BUT! We did it! We paid our stupid bill every week and now we can roll that money that we'd been putting on the credit card to our second stupid credit card.

At least with the first credit card, we have a concrete "thing" we purchased and use daily. Our floors were a necessity because William has horrible allergies and in the spring, his dustmite allergy coupled with his hayfever/seasonal allergies get so bad that he ends up having asthma attacks. His allergist commended us for ripping up the old carpet and recommended us replacing the one downstairs at the earliest possible time. This next credit card is purly stupid spending. Spending on stuff. I don't recall one single thing I "own" from that debt besides one graduate credit from Fitchburg University for a class I took last winter. That's it. Whhhooohoooo...not!

So, we're rolling over/snowballing our payments so hopefully by June of next year, we will be done with credit card debt. Then we'll attack our Home Equity Loan with fervour and hopefully we will never, ever be in such debt again. I'm not so worried about our mortgage, but I'd love to be able to shave 10 years off the life of the mortgage. First we need to pay off the other debts and then we'll get to the mortgage.

I'm so happy! We're two debts down, and two to go! :)