Adventures in Debt

Tricia over at Blogging Away Debt talked about how her family was on a spending freeze a few weeks ago. I thought this was a splendid idea for me, since I seem to have accumulated another $3000 in debt through some mysterious means. Now, if I at least had a shiny new television to show for that spending, I could at least understand, but I tell you, I have not done any extra purchasing AT ALL.

“But wait a minute Jb,” you’re asking youself right now. “Didn’t you just go away on a road trip to Pittsburgh a few weeks ago?”

Yes I did, but if you’ll recall, I also used only the money I’d saved in my travel savings account, and that only left me about $25 short of the total moolah I needed to finance the trip. And remember, my only take-away from that trip was a $7.50 souvenir for my brother-in-law.

“And didn’t you also go on a trip to Vancouver too? Come on now Jb, how can you be surprised at this increase in debt?” you continue to ask.

I can only tell you that I have no idea where that money went. Honestly, I have no idea.

So I’m starting up the Budget Binder. Okay, it’s not a full-on budget binder in that it’s not tracking how much I’m spending in each category, but I’m writing down all of my expenses just to see where I’m spending all my money. This is because I have no idea where the hell all my moolah is going. I got this idea from Gail Vaz-Oxlade, who’s the financial advisor on the show Til Debt do us Part. You can check out more on the show here. Most of the people on featured on the show don’t know where they’re spending a lot of their money, specifically their cash. Because I’ve been pretty good with my expenditures on my credit card(s) and/or lines of credit, I’m thinking it must be the cash that’s messing me up somehow. My “only withdraw $200 in cash each pay and spend till it’s gone” theory must not be working. Although I’m not entirely sure that’s the issue, I figure this is a good place to start. I am going to track all the money I spend though, using expensr.com as well. The reason I like expensr is that their analysis software makes nice pie charts of all the information you enter into it. So starting July 1, I’ll be tracking all of my expenses and seeing where the money is going.

Here’s to hoping I can solve the mystery! I’ve got some expensive expenses coming up, so I’d like to be able to breathe a little easier.

Several months ago I decided to bite the bullet and apply for another credit card, which I only did because they were having a 0% interest rate on balance transfers deal. These 0% interest rate deals are few and far between here in Canada, so I was curious to see what it was all about. I was pleased to see that: 1-they gave me the card, and that 2-I’m now saving a whackload of interest on about $5000 of my debt.

This past weekend I started wondering about whether Citi Financial would give me another good deal on transferring more debt to this card. Typically you can only get that wonderful deal when you apply, so I was just hoping to get a single-digit interest rate on the new balance I wanted to transfer over. So I gave them a call.

Would you know it, they said I could transfer over as much balance as I wanted to the card as long as I had room on the card, and that it was before the promotional rate ended. Hot diggity dog!

As of last night, July 2nd, I now have almost half of my debt, that’s approximately $10,500, at 0%, that’s ZERO PERCENT! What do you think of that dear readers? Not bad for one phone call.

Many of you may have noticed that I’ve not done any Monthly Number Crunching posts, and there’s a reason: I’m embarrassed to say how much my debt has increased! It was only increasing by small amounts over the last 6 months or so ($1000 each time), but in the last couple, it’s gone up by big chunks. And yet again, I have no idea why. I have not purchased any big ticket items (as much as I want a new tv and a new computer), and have not gone on any clothes shopping sprees. I am going to take some time this holiday (it’s Canada Day on Tuesday) and start figuring some things out. I think I’ll do the classic “track my spending for a month” routine and see where the money is going. I am a little suprised and dismayed to see this number increase, and had thought I was doing well. (In two months I will have paid off one of my balance transfer credit cards, and I was quite pleased with that.) How annoying, how frustrating, and how embarrassing! Apparently I am going to have to do some serious belt tightening and make a more concerted effort to sell off any and all unused/useless things in my house.

Stay tuned for some serious money crunching and belt tightening measures. *sigh*