Debt Stupid

I haven’t posted at all since July. I can’t believe time has flown by so fast. The year 2008 is coming to an end in a few weeks. Wow.

I haven’t done that great a job posting on this blog. I want to change that for the new year.

I just came to the realization that I am not going to make my goal of being debt free by July 1st, 2009. I have only paid down 17% of my debt so far since starting to blog about my debt. So that got me down as well, part of the reason that I fizzled out on wanting to post more on the blog.

My new attitude is that, at least, I am not in that much of a bad state, it could be worse. Many people have lost their jobs, and so far I am still able to make a steady income. I have brought down the debt on my highest interest rate credit card down to $1,900 dollars. I have been attacking this card the most and as soon as I see a zero balance on that account, I will cancel the credit card, I am hoping that will happen in about four- to five-months. I have learned my lesson on banking with the big banks, no more! I will have a lot to say about them in the future and right now, I urge anyone who is thinking about opening a credit card or mortgage with any of the big banks to run away as though you have seen the devil himself, because that is exactly who you will be dealing with.

The greed of the officials running these big banks has gotten so bad that they are now being bailed out by uncle Sam (a mistake in itself, but what can you expect from a government that has ignored the citizen and did not help us when it was needed the most, instead uncle Sam made it more difficult for an individual to go into bankruptcy, but forgot to pass legislation to stop these banks from raping us with double-billing, interest rate hikes for no apparent reason, except greed, and on and on). I bet that in a few more years we will be back here with a bigger financial mess.

Slowly but surely. That’s how this is going down.

This month I managed to only bring down my debt by $266.19. This is due to my declining income this month and the high interested rate credit cards. I have two of those right now. But I will not for much longer. This week I asked for and got a limit increase on my 6% interest rate credit card to $10,000. Giving me $5,000 more on that card. I immediately did a balance transfer from the 30% interest rate card.

I will only have about $2,500 dollars left on that awful Washing Mutual credit card. The interest on that card will not be as bad form now on, as it was this month, a whopping $175+. I will do my best to get rid of that and cancel the card. I am making progress, slowly but surely.

Living frugally where I live? No chance!

This month our electric bill will go up another 22% (I could be off by +/-1%). Small businesses here are caving under the sheer pressure of this economic gloom and the local politicians are inept and corrupt to be able to help. They are the cause of so many of the problems facing Puerto Rico, they spend their time playing party politics and not really coming up with measures to help.

Why should they? They make like $70,000 dollars a year, plus, on average, another $50,000, in get this, $150 to $170 a day for lunch. Why should they care?

This is a tough economic climate to try and make a living indeed.

This month I knocked off $522.34, peanuts, but hey it slow going from here on.

My total debt still hovers over $18,000.00. Wish I could dump more on this debt.

I don’t have much to post about, it’s been a quite month for me as far as keeping my spending down.

But I did learn something new. Did you know that the total US debt is over 160 trillions dollars? Damned! And we are called deadbeats for carrying so much debt. LOL!

Wasn’t it Bill Maher who said:

“It’s like if you can’t pay your mortgage, you’re a deadbeat, but if you can’t pay a million mortgages, you’re Bear Stearns, and we bail you out.”

This month I knocked off $1036.28 from all my credit card debt. Since I started this blog I have knocked off a total of $1,860.12 from my total credit card debt. Not bad, considering that I actually used them again.

But, life always gets in the way, doesn’t it?

I am going to try my hardest to avoid using them. I am on a mission this time to take care of this debt. It will be slow going form this month on. I lost my passive income and although I am waiting to receive my principle back this will be slow. But even if I knock down a few hundred dollars a month it will mean progress and that is good.

Do I dare hope that this time the Feds are actually moving to help the citizens of this nation with real action, instead of pandering, that will help most of us working peons from being abused to no end by the predatory credit card issuers?

The industry is already in full swing trying desperately to stop these new rules. They are using the usual tactics. Their most vocal threat is that this could choke off credit. LOL! Not even a new born baby would believe that one. If they don’t lend, especially now with the new rules, they don’t make money. So that argument is just a scare tactic.

The other threat is that of raising interest. They can do that. But that will only force even more credit card carrying members into a situation where they will move to a better offer, and the number of defaulting members will rise. None of which is good for the issuers who claim to be hurting.

I hope this time the Office of Thrift Supervision and Congress are not swayed by such ridiculous scare tactics.

On Thursday, the Office of Thrift Supervision, responsible for overseeing the nation’s savings and loans, endorsed a seven-point plan that would allow consumers more time to pay their monthly bill. It would also ban “double cycle billing,” a practice that computes finance charges based on previous billing cycles.

“Today’s proposal addresses practices that have raised concern about fairness and transparency,” the OTS said.

— Click here to read the full story.

I really have nothing worthwhile to report about my debt.

I have been keeping busy working and promoting my online websites. I have decided to crank up my promotion of my other websites, they do make some money. I think I should promote them more and bring in the traffic to hopefully make even more money from the ads.

I have been reading a few websites about promoting online. It seems that everyone has the same ideas. I wonder if people just pickup what someone else has written on a specific subject and just rehashes it, different enough that you avoid plagiarism, and put it out there. I wonder if many of the so called promotion experts have really put what they say into action themselves?

Hmmm….

The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision is crafting rules to protect consumers from abusive credit card practices:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision is crafting rules to protect consumers from abusive credit card practices such as retroactive rate increases, the agency’s deputy director told lawmakers on Thursday (April 14, 2008).

I don’t know if I really believe this. I still read from credit card holders about their current nightmares. It seems credit card issuers are still playing their old dirty tricks. I myself went from a 19% to a 30% (over time, of course) interest rate on one of my credit cards. I am trying to pay it down and get rid of it, like I did to one already.

What bothers me is that even though I have never been late with a payment this is how Providian (purchased by Washington Mutual) has treated me as a great customer. I have only one credit card I will keep, which is at an insane low interest rate level these days, and they don’t hit you with late fees if your are ever late! My other credit card accounts will be canceled, as soon as I pay them off, and the credit cards themselves will cut into a million little pieces!

I don’t believe in government regulations, but this is one area where I really want it to happen.

I feel better about my debt now. I am not using my credit cards to get by. This is got to be one of the worst places to be in life. Borrowing to eat and be able to get to work?

US deep in debt and still digging

All the numbers say the average debtor in the U.S., now unable to pull cash out of his or her house by refinancing a mortgage, is running up home-equity debt and credit card balances instead. Average balances on home-equity lines climbed 8% in the first quarter of 2008 from the first quarter a year earlier, according to Moody’s Economy.com. Average balances on credit cards were up almost 10% in the first quarter.

The geographical pattern of this buying is absolutely predictable: Home-equity and credit card borrowing is rising fastest in those areas where home prices have dropped the most. Credit card balances were up 15% in the first quarter in California and Florida, and up 20% in Nevada.

The numbers also say this extra debt isn’t going for handbags at Coach or cases of Bordeaux. Credit card companies are reporting that the fastest growth is in categories such as groceries and gasoline. People are using debt as a bridge, it seems, in the hope the economy will recover before they have to make deep cuts in their spending.

I just brought down my debt by another $400.00.

Bad news, though. Looks like my investment money will not be returned to me as fast as I was led to believe. Complications are going to make that take quite a bit longer. In the meantime I will continue my small crawl out of debt.

As I mentioned previously my debt had ballooned to more than the original starting debt on this blog, so it is a great relief to, at least, see that I am below that by another $400 now.