Living Optimized

I received a referral from my brother Josh to sign up for an ING Direct Orange Savings account.  He gets $10 for the referral and I get $25 for opening an account with at least an inital deposit of $250.  Its a win, win.

I already have a savings account with my local bank and credit union so the reason for adding yet another savings account to my portfolio is for the “sub accounts” capability that they offer.  I can create and allocate funds into sub accounts from within my Orange savings account.  The idea being there is that it will help me manage bills that are not paid monthly or regularly.  E.G. Propane Prepay, Yearly Trash Bill, Vacation, Savings for Birthdays and Christmas.  Hopefully, by allocating money into the various sub accounts it will allow me to save up for purchases without the tendency to dip or rob the savings when it is amassed into a larger pool of savings.   It also should give me a clearer picture of how we are doing in regards to individual savings goals.  Just waiting for ING to verify and allow me to setup additional links to my other bank accounts.  KTD!

It’s no secret how we paid off our last credit card. We just followed the debt snowball and stopped spending with it. We never really used this particular credit card for purchases but you’ll notice we used it for a couple balance transfers. We started the debt snowball in March 2010 so for March and April we just made one minimal payment each month. Then when our snowball finally got to this debt, we bombarded it with payments. Everytime we had a little extra money pop up, we made a credit card payment. Sometimes we made as many as 5 payments a month!  Some were only tens of dollars while others were hundreds of dollars! This was so much fun! Eventually we killed this debt and now we are on to the next (and last) one.

Here is a snapshot of our credit card balances from October 2009 to October 2010. It’s easier to follow the progress if you start viewing the snapshot from bottom to top. I hope it encourages others.

Our progress paying off our last credit card.

No tricky photoshoppin’ here.  Just some Discover cards discovering my shredder!  Instead of the activation stickers the cards they should come shredded “For Your Protection”

I receive this email from Chase the other day. Chase advised me to ‘make a smart move.’ I am… I’m only using cash.

Great Advice from Chase

If you are serious about getting out of debt, there is something you should know yet many people fail to realize it. It must be the very first thing you do and should be easy to grasp but can be difficult to implement.

Just for fun, if you were to Google “ways to get out of debt” you will be presented with many different lists of ways to pay off debt. You might see articles like “9 Ways to Pay Off Debt“, “20+ Ways to Get Rid of Your Debt for Good“, “The 12-Step Get-Out-of-Debt Program“, and so on. These articles are great and make suggestions that can really help but make no mistake, the first step to getting out of debt is as simple as stop going into debt. Sure, the “20+ Ways…” and “12-Step Plans…” will inform you of ways to pay down debt but if you are in a continual cycle of paying down debt and adding more debt, YOU WILL NEVER GET OUT!

Imagine this, you are in a small wooden boat and there is a little hole in the bottom. Water is starting to come in and you slowly begin to sink. Now you have a few options… you can grab that empty bucket beside you and start scooping the water out of the boat only to realize that as you scoop water out, water comes right back in. This can be an endless cycle and eventually you will become exhausted. Another option is to find a way to plug that hole and then to start scooping the water out for good. Of course, I recommend the latter.

The moral of my story is this, if you want to get out of debt once and for all, your very first step must be to stop going into debt. Stop spending on the credit cards, stop the car loans, stop buying things with money you don’t have! Plug your debt hole! I know, it kinda sounds dirty but I want my point to stick with you.

Kill that debt!

We finally called to cancel our home phone line the other day.  We only had it for the Dish Receivers to get updates and for our DSL Internet.  Almost all our calls were made on our Mobile phones.  Since we can get “naked” DSL from our telco and our Dish Receivers use ethernet connections for updates now we decided to cancel it.  We really didn’t use it all that much and it cost us around $60 per month.  While I was on the phone with CenturyLink we had them cut the HD Platinum Channels out of our TV Package and the $6 service plan.  We never heard of let alone watched the 16 HD Channels that we were paying $10 a month for.  More KTD money!

Check out the Savings!

Finally uploaded some pictures from the KTD Garage Sale.