New Debt on the List
For the past several months I’ve been waiting for my one credit card company to offer me a new balance transfer deal, considering the card’s been at $0.00 for almost three months now. This bank was usually pretty good about sending me deals, typically sending me something about a month after my last one expired. But I guess with the way the economy’s going, they didn’t want to be as pro-active about it.
So I decided to get pro-active myself.
Because two of my cards are currently at crazy double-digit interest rates because of the expiry of other deals, I am slowly trying to move over that debt to my lines of credit, because at least that way I’ll only be charged a single digit interest rate. I know all the experts say that this is just doing a “debt shuffle”, but for now that’s the best I can do. But I had this one card sitting there with an available limit on it. So I decided to call them up this week and see if there was anything they could do for me.
I spoke to a very nice representative named Stephanie who told me three interesting things:
- I had one offer of 5.9% till the end of June available.
- I had another offer of 5.9% till the end of August available.
- My credit limit was now $3,000.
I was surprised by that last one since the limit had been only $2,000 for the longest time. I guess when they saw I wasn’t using the card at all, they increased the limit to entice me to spend. Sneaky buggers.
So I decided to move over the full $3,000 from my CIBC Visa card, as that would mean I’d be able to pay off the remainder more quickly than my MasterCard (M/C). That would wipe out the crazy double-digit interest on at least one of my debts.
That’s why there’s now another item in my Current Debt list over there on the sidebar. I’ve also decided to stop putting the total, since it’s a little depressing to see it all there. I’ll recalculate it and repost it when I’ve decreased the number of items in that list. I know, a little silly, but again, I just need to see some progress there, you know? *sigh*
