First and last credit card
13-Dec-08
My first credit card — a Chase Rewards card that I got back in 2005 to help with Thorn expenses — is now my last and final. It had a $300 credit limit when I got it, and had a $2700 limit earlier this evening. I paid the remaining bit of balance on it this morning and closed it just 20 minutes ago once I saw the balance was $0. It took 2 minutes and 52 seconds to sever my last line of revolving credit.
I feel strangely… cut loose. Like I’m no longer wrapped up in so much of America’s debt problem, even though I still have loans.
But all that’s left is the $25k of my student loans and the bit I owe my parents.
You might laugh at “only” $25k, but $25k at ~6% and 0% interest (student loans and parental loans, respectively) beats $6k at 30% interest any day in terms of my ability to sleep at night.
December 2010, y’all, if my salary stays the same in that time. Unfortunately, my credit card woes won’t disappear off my credit history for 7 years, or 2014 for the worst of it. The “worst” being some rather late bills. 2015 for all the revolving credit info to be gone.
I’m very glad that I realized at the end of teaching that I needed to get the debt under control (that is, gone), rather than after I was earning larger wages. It’d be much harder to curtail spending and sack away money if I’d grown accustomed to spending all that I earned on a proper developer’s salary. Now I have about the same living expenses as I did when I was teaching, but more than half-again the income.
That’s good stuff.
You might also like...
- One credit card down!...
- On tax returns and economic stimuli...
- Diversion of interests...
- Daily tasteeness (2008-01-20)...
- Step 0, done...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.