November 2012 Debt Update

Congrats to Obama on reelection.  Good thing I voted for him.  Now let's get down to business.

My current revolving & short term (med bills) debt totals have been trending as follows:

• $63139  2012-06
• $56709  2012-07
• $57386  2012-08
• $58353  2012-09
• $59132  2012-10

• $57275  2012-11 <~ Yay!!!

Damn, paying off shit makes me feel good, though part of the payoff isn't quite "real", it's a step in the right direction.  I've been able to pay off $1857 in real debt.  How much did I pay in interest?  I really don't want to look, but It's at least $400-500 down the drain.  So what happened this month?

• Refinanced house from 5.8% to 4.25% going from a 1200/mo to 1018/mo payment.  Free'd up about $200/mo in cash flow, but I increased my 401k from 1% to 4% to take advantage of my employers matching.  So cashflow remains exactly the same.
• Received about $3k in cash out from the refinance.
• Received another $3k bonus ($1800 after taxes) from work.

I had an extra $4800 to play with this month, and why did my total balance only go down $1800?  This is where it went:

• $1000 catch up on last month's bills. (grrrrrrrrrr, ugh)
• $2000 added to budget cushion.  My 2x paychecks in November will pay for December's bills.  I used to have it where the prior month's last paycheck & current month's first paycheck paid for the current month.  Now I have a full month's buffer.  In a sense, it's also my kind of my $1k emergency fund without putting aside an emergency fund.

This left $1800 to pay down extra principle and pay down the credit cards.

Here's the current state of my revolving debt.

• 16290 Chase @ 2% till payoff
• 12806 Chase @ 3% till payoff
• 1660   Discover @ 0% till 10/2012 (not sure after)
• 7214   BoA @ 20%
• 4376   Cap1 @ 17.9%
• 2455   OldNavy @ 25%
• 2380   Citi Diamond @ 6.24%
• 1960   Chase Amazon @ 20.24%
• 1518   Citi Plat @ 12.24%
• 1547   Advanta @ 8%
• 1573   Barclays @ 18%
• 1200   Cap1 @17.9%
• 766     Kay @ 25%
• 542     GE Amazon @ 0% till 06/2013
• 450     Hospital @ 0%
• 200     Cap1 @ 11.9%

The following were paid off providing $195/mo in extra cashflow.  The conventional Dave Ramsey wisdom says to take that $195/mo and snowball it into an entry above, but since my budget is upside down, the debt snowball begins now.  In my budget, I've committed $1400/mo in the pay down debt column.  http://unbury.me says that I should be paid off in December of 2015 sometime.  I'm hoping that it's sooner.  Come March, I should be able to kill at least 10k worth of these pesky things if I don't get fired.

• 422 Chase @ 30% ($25/mo)
• 325 Home Depot @ 0% (50/mo)
• 280 Macys @ 25% (25/mo)
• 65 Macys @25% (25/mo)
• 150 Hospital @ 0% (30/mo)
• 120 Hospital @ 0% (40/mo)

Now to stay strong and not spend $ on bullshit stuff!  My wife did just call asking me to pick up some mint choc chip icecream.  There goes $5 =P