New Year's Resolutions

I know it has been a while since I have posted, but I actually have a little time so I thought I would write something up. I hope you have all had a wonderful holiday season, and didn't overspend too much.

During this time of the year, many people make New Year's resolutions. Some decide to get healthier and lose weight while others decide that they want to makeover their financial situation. This year I have resolutions to do both.

I need to get my butt in gear and get this weight off. I want to do this not only so I can lose the weight and wear smaller clothes, but also so that I can feel healthier and have more energy. Both my husband and I have gym memberships, it is just a matter of getting there. It is relatively cheap and it is open twenty four hours a day. So, this should make it easier to get there, but getting the inspiration to leave and go has proved difficult. I am going to start trying to go in the morning before work. If this doesn't work, then I will start doing 30 Day Shred several times during the work week and just go to the gym on the weekends.

Financially, I have some really big goals for the coming year. Fortunately, we found out yesterday that my husband's unemployment will be extended until at least April. So that is good news. If it hadn't been extended, it would have run out in the middle of February. That would have meant a month and a half of saving every last penny we could get our hands on. This would have given us about $1500 (or more) in our savings to help pay bills with. I figured that with this amount and our current bills we would have to use a little less than $400 of it each month.

I still want to get that $1500 in the savings account and get some of our credit cards paid off. So, here are my financial goals for 2010 and how we will achieve them:

1. Save $1500 in our emergency fund. This is also what Dave Ramsey suggests you do before you start paying off the bills. I have already devised our budget for the next 6 months and figured out that by the middle of February we will be at this amount. Although we will have reached our goal at that time, we will continue taking out $25 a week and having it automatically placed in our online savings account.
2. Build up our food stockpile. I would like to have enough food for 4-6 months (with only having to buy perishables). This would help in case of lower income or any other reason we couldn't get to the store. I will be taking a weekly inventory of what we have so I know what we need more of in order to have a 4 month supply. I will then stock up when I get a deal of those foods.
3. After our EF is fully funded, we will start snowballing our credit cards. Although I think it might be a little bit smarter to pay the highest interest debts off first, I think it gives you more motivation if you pay off the smallest balances first. As previously stated, I have done up a budget for the next 6 months and have already figured out how much I will be using to pay off debt each week. After getting the first debt paid off, I will take the payment I normally paid on that debt, plus the extra and put it on the next smallest debt.
4. After our credit cards are paid off I will be concentrating on paying off our van early. We own our explorer so we don't have to worry about paying that off. I will then concentrate on getting my school loans paid off.

So what are your New Year's resolutions? I would love to hear. Leave them in the comments.

Credit Card Vent - Juniper and Capital One

I am going to vent here for a moment. I hope you don't mind. Today I received my statement from Juniper and I was reading it. My interest rate went from 8.99% to 14.99%!!!!!!! Holy Crap!!! I never received a letter from them saying they were doing this and neither did my husband who also has an account with them. I called them up and they said a letter was mailed out in March. I know I would have seen at least one of the letters saying this. I am a busy person, but I am not that busy.

I told them I didn't get any letter and they don't care. She told me that the reason it went up is because of trying economic times. More like it's because they want to raise every one's rates before that legislation takes affect! All these credit card companies that are raising their rates on good, stable customers are going to find themselves in a predicament. Customers will start paying off their balances. Then they will start living within their means and not use credit cards anymore. The credit card companies will have no one to blame except themselves when they go out of business!

We plan on paying off the rest our credit cards just as soon as I get a job. Hubby has a Capital One card that will be going up to 6% in November (from 0%) and he received a letter two days ago saying that effective in April 2010 his rate will jump to 15% and will not be a fixed rate. We owe about $600 to Capital One for hubby, $700 for hubby's Juniper, $2400 for my Juniper (this was used a lot while hubby was on strike a year and a half ago), and $1100 on my Capital One. When we got our tax refund we paid off Best Buy ($390), Bill Me Later ($600) and my other Capital One ($100). So, we are on our way to getting these paid off and we don't use them anymore so that helps. Now if only I can get a job, we would be well on our way to getting these paid off as quick as possible!

Punishing people who have good credit will not make these companies more money. It will just tick the good customers off and they will no longer be customers!!!