Fortunately, the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights passed the House of Representatives on September 23rd, though it still must pass the Senate and the President.

I’m glad it passed, but I’m also concerned about the 112 morons representatives who voted AGAINST this bill. What is wrong with these people? I don’t know if they are all in the pockets of the credit card companies, but really I can only assume these people are much more interested in the rights of credit card companies to rip us off than our rights to not be ripped off.

Check this link to see if your representatives voted yes or no and take action to kick out the fools who voted no on this bill. Three representatives who voted no are from Arizona (where I live), but none of them are from my district (thankfully). I did write to the one Representative who accepts email from someone outside of his district (I can see why the others don’t want to hear from anyone else). Please take some time to let these people know what you think of their actions.

From the Archives - September 2007

How Much Stuff Do We Need?

I don’t think I fully understood it at the time, but I was on my way to realizing the evils of American Consumerism and how wasteful it all is. I still feel like I have too much stuff today, but thinking back one year ago I can remember a lot more junk on my entertainment center shelves and I don’t miss any of it.

I think the other problem inherent with large collections of ’stuff’ is that we naturally must put less value in each individual item that we own. If you own 4 DVDs, there is probably a good chance you really like those 4 and you will watch them over and over. If you own 50, how many of those DVDs do you really like? Could you possibly name all 50 that you own? If not, what is the point? What if you could go back in time and turn 40 of those DVDs into $400 that was sitting in the bank right now or being paid toward your debt? I know which I would rather choose, though I probably would have made the wrong choice not too long ago.

Might as Well Lose Some Weight Too

This was just a short post announcing my intention to work on losing weight again. The said thing is, I mentioned how I canceled my World of Warcraft account and started to take back my time and become productive. I guess that was going well until I re-subscribed earlier this year.

Spending Too Much on Groceries

In this post I was just discovering the problems I had with wasting food and buying too much of it.

Just last week I threw out about $12 worth of old food from the refrigerator. A couple weeks before that I threw away a rather large amount of food from the pantry because it was expired, though I did not take the time to think about how much money was wasted then. It strikes me as rather ridiculous that I throw away perfectly good food just because I didn’t feel like eating it in time or I was too lazy to do so.

Looking back, I can see that I have made a lot of progress in this area. I don’t over stock the pantry and freezer any more and I work really hard to make sure I use up everything before it goes bad. I’m definitely saving a lot of money on groceries now compared to one year ago (and making much better use of basic ingredients to prepare my own food).

Apologies if you have recently sent an email to feedback@financeandfat.com, but I had to delete that email address. There was just too much spam and I didn’t want to dig through it anymore. I created a new address with Gmail, which has amazingly good spam filters. You can now contact me using financeandfat [at] gmail [dot] com.

Please feel free to send any questions, comments, or criticisms to that address. I check it once a day.

I participated in the Carnival of Personal Finance this week and I was lucky enough to be chosen as an editor’s pick with my Getting Out of Debt is Boring… post. Many thanks to Banker Girl for hosting this week.

Here are a few of my favorites from the carnival:

• 5 Easy Steps to Kickstart Your Retirement [Retired at 47] - I especially like the tip to pick a time frame. I suppose that sounds obvious, but I’ve never sat down and picked an age for retirement.
• One Thing I Want My Kids to Know About Money [Free Money Finance] - “Money is a great servant, but a terrible master.” If you had to pick only one thing to reach your kids about money, I think this really sums it up well.
• What We’re Doing to Adjust to One Income [Free From Broke] - Good tips for adjusting your lifestyle when one income goes away. Something I’m preparing to deal with in the not too distant future.

And a few of my other favorites from the past week:

• Five Lessons Learned During My Adventures in Fitness [Get Fit Slowly] - I really like the tip to look back at a failed plan and write your ‘lessons learned’. That is something I need to do as I go up and down with my fitness goals.
• Eating for Pennies - Part 1 - Breakfast [Canadian Dream: Free at 45] - Tips for cutting your food costs. Something I’m really working hard at lately. I’m looking forward to more of this series.

And finally, an article from December of 2007 that I didn’t discover until this week. It’s from Early Retirement Extreme and it does a great job at illustrating the importance of living below your means and how to build wealth. I high recommend it- The Economics of Robinson Crusoe

Update: Looks like the Flash chart didn’t load properly at first- should be corrected now.

Now that I’m 1 year into the blog, I’d like to get back to tracking my credit card debt payoff progress monthly. Included below is a chart of the progress I have made.

The good news is that I have paid off $11,221 of credit card debt over the past year. The bad news is that my progress slowed down greatly over the past 6 months and my average paid off per month is only $863. Toward the end of 2007 and early 2008 I was typically paying off between one and two thousand per month.

Basically, my spending has crept back up over the past 6 months and I just haven’t been as tight with the budget as I was at the beginning. I’m working to get my spending back in line now and hoping to get closer to the $2,000 per month of extra payments range going forward.

Credit Card Debt

Credit card debt progress since August 2007

Apologies for the down time. I made a foolish mistake while setting up a new code repository and version management tool- that’s just geek stuff if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, it’s not important. I killed the site and couldn’t quickly fix it so I decided it would be a good time to upgrade to Wordpress 2.6 while I was at it. That probably complicated things a little bit, but now I am back up and running with the latest version of Wordpress and all things seem to be well for now. Please let me know if you notice any errors or other weird things on the site. Thanks for your understanding. 

What I’ve learned in one year of my debt reduction plan

September 2008 marks one year since I started this blog and made my ‘official’ commitment to getting out of debt. I remember one year ago making a budget and seeing that my spending exceeded my income. I had large piles of debt and very little confidence that I would ever get out of the mess. Once I figured out how to live below my means I began the slow process of chipping away at the mountain of debt.

It’s easy to make a budget at the start of the month and make a plan to pay off X dollars worth of debt. However, once you make that plan, you have to sit and wait. You have to wait for paychecks to arrive, statements to come in, money to be transferred, payments to be reconciled and finally the new statement the next month that validates your progress. This is all very boring!

Not only is it dull to wait for everything to progress from month to month, but what if you need to repeat the process for 24 more months? It can become very difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is very easy to doubt that you will really get there. I speak from experience as I have doubted my efforts just about every month.

How to overcome the boredom and keep working your plan:

• Track your progress regularly
• Be Patient and Expect mistakes

Track your progress regularly:

This can be as simple or sophisticated as you want. Anything from pen and paper to spreadsheets and graphs will get the job done. Use what is most comfortable for you and what you are most likely to update regularly.

I keep a budget and track my debt monthly on a computer, mostly using Quicken and Excel. I also update a whiteboard on my refrigerator each month with my new debt total and how much I have paid off so far. The whiteboard is something I see every day and that is the most effective way to stay motivated to stick with my plan. I highly recommend putting your debt progress somewhere you will see every day.

Be Patient and Expect mistakes:

Patience is great, but no matter how patient you are, you still need to prepare for set-backs. You will make mistakes as you work your plan. You will slip up and buy something that breaks your budget that you know you shouldn’t have bought. You will have emergencies come up that drain your emergency fund and maybe more and stop you from making as much progress as you had hoped that month. Know ahead of time that these mistakes will happen and don’t let them destroy your plan.

Acknowledge your mistakes, but move on to the next month and do your best to get back on track. Believe me, I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, but none of them have been as devastating as quitting would be. You’ll never look back and wish that you had quit, but if you do quit now you know you will look back and wish you had not.

In Summary:

• Make a plan
• Track your progress
• Be patient and expect mistakes

It’s not easy, but you have to keep working at it. I don’t like the fact that I could be looking at another year until my credit cards are paid off, but I have no other choice. Giving up isn’t an option. I have a plan, I know it works, I just need to keep going and do my best to speed up the pace every opportunity I get.

There are no secrets and there is no quick fix, but if you follow my advice you will be better prepared to stay the course and survive the long journey to debt freedom.