CNN.com has an article about the ever increasing credit card debt that Americans have accumulated. Today I am here to say that I am not one of those millions. I got my tax refund Friday and I am in the process of paying those suckers off. I’ll still have a HELOC but that was used to acquire an asset so slowly but surely my guilt over that debt is eroding. I’m happy to say that I’ve learned a lot over the past few months thanks to PF blogs and the following is a list of things I’m going to do to make sure I stay cc debt free:
- Have an ever increasing Emergency Fund so when an emergency happens I won’t have to use any credit cards. I’ve just broke the $1,000 mark on my efund which is very small compared to where it should be. The concept of saving 6 to 8 months of living expenses seems impossible but there is no deadline. Suze Orman, shows a table extended out to ten years in her free e-book. It would suck to take ten years to build an e-fund money but the point is to have it and make incremental increases. (FYI, I have separate savings accounts for car, house, etc so my efunds is really at $2,000 but I don’t like including those accounts because I make withdrawals from those accts pretty regularly.
- Continue to post monthly net worth statements because they tell me where I am in my finances and makes me accountable.
- Spend less than I earn!
It’s really not a lot. In fact, it’s boring and because it’s boring it’s so easy to slide back into debt. It really is more fun getting out of debt than being debt free but not if I make challenging goals. Reaching a positive net worth is my next goal and assuming that OKC house values do not fall again, then I believe 2009 will be a pretty good year for me!
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