How Sweet It Is! Another PIF!

This morning, I made a final transfer from my US RBC account to my Canadian RBC account.
Total amount transfered $3608 which equals out to $3527.43 (Darn Canadian dollar doing better than the US lol)

Total transfered to the RBC Visa - $3521.24 which makes it Paid In Full!

I was so excited I even took a screenshot of it!

Please ignore the New Balance, this is my Canadian account and only has real funds in it when I make transfers to it to pay the Canadian cards.  If my balances ever got that low, I think I would have either a heart attack or a flashback to about 3-4 years ago when it used to happen a lot!

I don't know how folks can do the $0 balance budget.  You all are very brave!

This feels AWESOME! Only one more Canadian card to go, and then we will have more money in the bank every paycheck that isn't going towards paying these, and all of that interest.  I'm scared to even look at how much we've paid in interest, so I think I will just make the final payments and NOT look...I might throw myself into a fit of depression.  Looking forward, not back from here on out :)

Money Comes In, Money Goes Out

Today is J's Payday. It's sad that I sit with my laptop waiting for 11:30am to hit because that is when his Credit Union memo posts his paycheck and I start paying bills.

So far I have set up payments for the Walmart Discover $1000, Discover $500, USAA $500 and NFCU Loan $300. I have also set up the pay off for the REI Visa $922.07.

Those will post tonight.

In other news, we finally got a decision from the VA regarding J's request for disability benefits. He never filed them when he got out of the Navy back in 1997. We were told by lots of people "plan to wait a long time!" or "You won't get anything from them, it's been too long".
Well, it can't hurt to just file. The worst that would happen is they would say is no. It took a year, but he 'qualifies' for 10% which is $123/month. They back dated to last June, so a nice deposit of $1476 showed up in the account last week.
Problem is, he should qualify for more. 'Apparently' he missed a VA medical appointment for his shoulder, which he injured and had to have surgery on when he was doing PT. We NEVER received an appointment letter for that. So we will appeal. This supposedly happens all of the time when veterans file for disability benefits, which I think is disgusting.

So, we'll take the 10% for now, and file the appeal, which he should get a new appointment, and hopefully he will qualify for more.

The really good news about this, is that when we go for our mortgage, which will be a VA Loan since we qualify for it, we won't have to pay any funding fees for it. A friend at work who takes mortgage applications, and has done many VA loans for her own mortgages has been really helpful in answering questions about it all. Hopefully by the end of this year we will have pictures of our new home :)

Update on the no spends is 2 so far this month. The next couple of weeks will definitely have to be strict for me!

Pay Days and Pay Offs/Pay Downs

This week was another pay day for J and myself. My last week on my regular salary. My pay raise should have kicked in on 05/29 so my next paycheck should reflect that increase (so happy!)

With J's pay we were once again able to pay off and pay down some of our debt.

So far I have done the following:
Walmart CC $626.87 - PIF!
Best Buy Mastercard $771.12 - PIF!
JCPenney $500 - Paydown with $480 remaining. This will be paid in full next paycheck.
Dell $520 - Paydown with $964.16 remaining. This will be paid in full around September. I have 0% financing on this until May 2012 but with J being away, we wanted to skype and I ended up getting him a laptop back in March. This should take care of the remainder on the interest part of the financing.
J's Corporate Card $435.60 - PIF I don't really count this towards our debt because it is all reimbursed by J's work. We're just waiting on his expense reports to come through. When it does I will probably just pay the JCPenney card off in full (which could be before next payday!)

On a really good note, I called MBNA Canada, with whom I have a credit card. They were actually my very first credit card that started with a $500 credit limit. That limit is now $22500 (and of course has NO effect on my credit down here). The interest rate was 18.5%. I decided to try for a reduction since I have never been late, and since I have a pretty high balance on the card right now. They were able to reduce it by 4%! That's going to save me $80 in interest per month! (yes, I have a HIGH balance on the card).
MBNA actually did something that at first I thought was horrible. They raised my minimum payment from about $300/month to clost to $600/month about a year ago. I was terrified! How was I going to make that! Well, I did. And I actually found myself making more than that. I actually feel like I'm getting ahead on paying it down because it's not 'all' going to interest.

So with the reduction, not only am I making more than double the interest charge, I'm going to have that extra $80 going towards principal :)

Next up, RBC Visa (my other Canadian card which is at 19.99%)