my plan to pay off $7,500 of debt

My creativity has been pumping over the last couple days. I think I have come up with more ideas for blog posts then I even know what to do with. More importantly though I think I have come up with away to tackle my credit card debt once and for all and within one year. dun dun dunnn.

That's right. I am planning on paying off $7573.43 in less then 12 months!

I'm excited just thinking about it. I've never actually had a solid plan in the past. Which is probably part of the reason I've been shouldering this debt as long as I have. I've never felt so motivated  to get rid of it all.

Here is the game plan. I've broken my single goal into two smaller (easily surmountable?) ones. My first goal is to have $3786.72 (half) paid off by Jan 1 2011. Leaving the remainder to be paid off by June 1 2011.

According to the Credit Card Payoff calculator at feedthepig.org it will take about $677/month to clear half of the balnce. I don't have an extra $677 a month so I'm taking a different route. My current monthly payment is $300/month. Starting in July I am upping it to $400 so over the next 6 months I will pay $2400 toward my goal. In Spetember I will receive another student loan refund. I am going to use that to make up for my shortfall and pay about $1600 more.

Now, for the second half of the year I will continue to pay $400/ month and am planning on using either my tax refund or bonus (if we get one) from work to get rid of the rest.

Done and Done. Credit Card debt free!

Now it's your job to keep me on track. Good luck with that :)

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two things I know are certain

First, I have officially paid off my second to last credit card for $2701! Woo! It was very exciting to log onto the bank website and see $0.00 as my balance. This credit card has been haunting me for a long time. You see that balance had originated on my very first credit card. It was from my bank in Michigan. When I moved to Maryland and I opened an account here I had the balance transferred to a new card that came with a 0% intro rate.

My goal was to pay off that card while the rate was still zero. However that never happened and after 3 years of my balance hovering around 3,000 I was sick of it. See my problem with paying down debt is that I don't make it a priority. Shoes, clothes, handbags, those are my priorities which makes paying down a debt a lengthy process for me.

Here is the catch though. I used money from my student loan refund to do it. Technically,I'm not in any less debt then I was. So what's the point? Well, student loan debt, especially federal loans, come with a much smaller price tag in terms of interest then a typical credit card. By paying my credit cards off I am "saving" money on my interest payments.

My next goal is to tackle my remaining Visa card with the largest balance of them all, $7200. Sadly enough that card at one point carried a balance of over $11,000. I have been slowly chipping away at it over the years but now that the rest are paid off it is time to get rid of this thing for good! I'm currently crafting a plan of attack that will maximize how much I pay towards the card while still appeasing SSBF by taking on more of our monthly expenses.

Secondly, this is going to be a whole other challenge now that Madewell has launched it's online shop. The only thing that has kept me from buying everything in this store in the past was the fact that I had to go the the busiest mall (Tyson's Corner) I've ever seen to get it. Now it's all within reach. And with looks like this, how do I resist?

All pictures from Madewell.com