Made a Big Payment

I have been waiting to be able to make this post. I have been fixated on it, couldn't wait for the moment to come...

I sent in a payment to one of our credit cards for $6000. WOO-HOO!!

Now comes an explanation as to why and how. Most financial gurus would not agree with the way that Fidget and I did things. Many of the financially-aware will scratch their heads and chuckle. In no way, shape, or form am I telling anyone, anywhere to follow our plan. But I am always a little curious how people come to the financial decisions that they do, so I will share some info.

A couple of years ago, we had made a really poor decision in car-buying. We bought a Chevy Avalanche (it was orange, and yes--part of me still misses it). It was a completely un-calculated, unnecessary, EXPENSIVE purchase...and we got a loan to do it. A loan with a crappy interest-rate (because the dealer we went to was a schmuck) and really high payments, because I insisted on a 4-year loan.

So, last year we traded cars numerous times to get our debt down, as well as our payment. In January, we made the last trade that we need to (assuming our cars keep running and don't get totaled or anything). In order to do that, I used a credit card check at 0.99% interest to make a down payment of $6000. Normally, I would never have considered doing that, not even for a second. But we had a plan to pay it back before the 90 day low-interest rate was up. So we used our tax return money and I sent the check off.

In hindsight, I can see all kinds of things that we could have done differently. Perhaps I will post about that another time.

For now, I'm going to do a little happy dance--I just made a credit card payment that cut our total credit card debt in half. SWEET!!