Thursday, April 15, 2010

Reimbursement!!

WOO!

I just got an email from BofA. My reimbursement of my travel expenses from my conference trip at the end of March has posted! That is $875.79!! Excellent. Of course, I have to remember that this is not extra money; it needs to go to pay the credit cards that financed the conference trip. Well, the rental car ($250) was on my debit card, so I can hang on to that. ;)

My plan right now is to transfer the part that I want to use to pay the credit card into my savings account, so I can get some interest on it. And then just pay my balance off on Bill Day.

So, yeah. It is being a good day.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Dwindling Debt

So, a bit of background info before getting into this post. I used to have a lot more credit card debt than I do now -- a LOT more. One of my credit cards that had a crazy high balance ($5000+ I think) kept going over the limit, which just made matters worse. Even when I wasnt using the damn card, interest charges and fees kept me from getting caught up on it. So, they offered me a deal. They closed my account and dropped the interest rate to 0% in exchange for automatically withdrawing payments from my checking account every month for 5 years. Not too bad, since I couldnt use that card anyway.

Anyway, I just got off the phone with the guy from the credit card company. Each year, I have to call and set up a years worth of payments. At the end of things, he told me that I had 10 payments of $131 and an 11th payment of $90.50 and that with the payment on March 5, 2011, the balance would be paid in full.

WOO HOO!

Granted, this is only one account among several. But it is a great step in the right direction. Plus, that $131/month can now go to paying more on another account. And that will help get other debt to go away faster. So, the light at the end of the tunnel is visible. It isnt bright or very close, but it is definitely there.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

2009 Taxes

Holy SHIT! I log in to Blogger and see that the last time that I posted anything was Feb 1! Well, I am a loser.

Anyway, this is (for once) a good post. I had been putting off doing my 2009 taxes for a long time. I knew that it was not going to be as bad as in the past, because taxes were withheld for the full year for the first time since being at this job. But still, I was gun shy.

Well, tonight, I bit the bullet and did my taxes. And -- drumroll please -- I actually do NOT owe any taxes to anyone!! That frakking god!

I am not getting massive refunds, but not owing is such a wonderful feeling. I will be getting $118 back from the state and $150.20 from Federal. The mild downside to this is that I do still owe 2008 taxes (UGH). So, my Federal refund is going to pay for that directly, so I wont actually see any of that money. But every little bit helps in paying off those pesky 2008 taxes.

So, hells yeah for not owing more taxes!!