BLOG IN YOUR FACE

I would like to announce to the world - or the 4 people that occasionally read my blog - that as of today, July 10th, 2008, I am officially credit card debt-free. I made the last payment of 308 dollars today and abruptly cancelled my one and only Visa card. When I say abruptly I mean I called Capital One, gave my information to a lady, answered a bunch of security questions, told her what I wanted, got transferred, sat on hold, got some other lady, answered the same questions, got told I would be transferred to an account specialist to complete my cancellation, sat on hold for 10 minutes while my cell phone got really hot against my ear, went through hell with the account specialist and was treated like it was a deadly sin to cancel a credit card after I hadn’t even used it in over 4 years and finally was told that the official cancelling of my credit card would take place sometime in the next 30 to 60 days but that if I used my credit card between now and then (after telling her repeatedly that it is in 4 pieces in a landfill somewhere) it would automatically activate my account again and something about accidental death and dismemberment.

PHEW!

Guinness Book of World Records? Longest run-on sentence ever???

But anyway, enough about my experience just trying to cancel the dang thing, my point of this celebratory blog is that I finally have the sucker out of my life. I am soooo  moved on. Seriously, I began racking up debt on that thing my senior year of college - 2003 and 2004 - and eventually got to the point where I was literally almost maxed out. My balance at one time was $1999.16 with a credit limit of $2000 dollars. I graduated in June of 2004 and began making payments on it…minimum payments.

My taking so long to pay it off was a result of two things. Number one, I was just plain irresponsible. I didn’t care how long it would take me with the minimum payment to pay it off. Number two, I never looked at my statement. I would simply go online whenever I remembered and make the minimum payment with the click of a mouse.

What I did not know is that with the minimum payment and my APR, it would have taken me 97 months (8 years, 1 month) to get to a zero balance. I also would have ended up paying $1208 dollars in interest. But it was worse than that…

Because I never looked at my statements, I forgot that I had signed up for some sort of payment protection program that was charging my card 13 bucks or so a month and also I forgot that I was donating 15 bucks a month to Green Peace out of that credit card. That meant that with my minimum payment, minus finance charges and the two charges above, I was only paying about 10 dollars a month in principle. That means that it would have taken me 200 months (over 16 years) to pay off my balance in full.

 So needless to say, when I met the love of my life who just happens to be the most responsible manager of money in the whole world, she motivated me to get this thing paid off. And by “motivated” I mean she raised one eyebrow and gave me a stern look last September and pretty much demanded that I pay the thing off before we got married.

So I did. And I took George’s stimulus check and put it toward my credit card debt, too. Which brings me to another point: My buddy said something along the lines of “…that check was suppose to stimulate the economy…you were suppose to go out and spend it on a ridiculous feat of electronic engineering, not paying down debt…” My response to that is this: By paying off credit card debt, we make it so the banks can loan that much money to some other schmuck who is going to go off spending way over his head and make the banks a heck of a lot of money on interest, and God knows they need that money with the housing crisis and all. The same goes with student loans. If I would have used my entire stimulus check on paying my student loans, that would have freed up 600 dollars for my lender to borrow to somebody else like an incoming freshman who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford college tuition. Now, in four years he is going to graduate college and buy a shiny new car with his college graduate career income. It’s all a cycle to me. No matter how you spend your stimulus check weather it be on a flat screen TV or investing it into a mutual fund, it is now or eventually going to stimulate the economy in one form or another.

But anyway, thanks to Uncle George’s stimulus check and me knuckling down to the grindstone, I have kissed credit card debt’s ass goodbye and it feels good. Debt is slavery. Plain and simple. Now I move on to the next debt mountain…my stupid truck loan…WHO THE HELL PUTS NO DOWN PAYMENT ON A 6 YEAR TRUCK LOAN RIGHT OUT OF COLLEGE LIKE A FRICKING IDIOT?!?!?!?

Oh yeah…me…woops.