
We’re approaching two years at American Debt Project. I told myself that two years would fly by, and yet I can’t believe that they have flown by! I can see the past year all in one condensed frame, and it’s amazing and scary. I am going to wake up one day and be 60. But I don’t mind at all, because I have seen some smoking hot older ladies these days, and I plan to be one. Pilates does a body good. Anyways, less than a year ago, I wrote the following sentence:
I just realized that at some point in the not too distant future, I will have a month where I am not accruing interest charges. Each month I am taking a step back of at least $200 in interest charges. This amount is decreasing, but I just realized how pleased I will be to look at all of my accounts and know I didn’t incur a single fee in a month.
Ladies and gentlemen, that day has come. I paid the last $0.06 of my student loan and I am now down to just one debt, at $5,708 on my 0% interest (until February 2014) Discover card. For the first time in many years, I am not shooting myself in the foot each month financially. I am not paying any interest to anyone! What a feeling!
Which made me realize that, even though I am so close to paying it all off, I now have the responsibility of being responsible. Here’s what I’m talking about: if I pay my car insurance premium up front for 6 months, I pay no additional fees. I can split it in two payments, and pay $20 extra, or do what I’ve been doing since I got car insurance, which is pay it monthly for an extra $10 per month, or $60 each 6-month period. But since my credit card debt has no interest, and my insurance would cost me $60 and is due next week, I’m paying the whole thing at once. I owe it to myself to not incur this $60 charge when I have incurred thousands in fees over the course of the past eight years. I’ll continue to pay everything else towards my debt, but that nice chunk that would have gone towards debt is going towards my car insurance premium to lower my costs. Even though I’d love to come on here tomorrow and announce my debt is well below $5,000, it will just have to wait.
Being responsible isn’t all that glamorous, but I’m feeling pretty good about approaching my money logically.