Archive for the ‘Credit Card Debt’ Category

One Step Closer to Freedom

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

It’s official.  I no longer have credit card debt.  DW had zero credit card debt when we were married.  Now we have about $7K in an auto loans and our student loans.  My records indicate I had over $25k in CC debt 5 years ago.  How did I finally get it down to $0?  It was a two-pronged approach, plus a bit of luck.

First, I’ve kept the balance on 0% interest credit cards, switching at least 3 or 4 times in the last 5 years.  At first it was pretty easy to get the 0% rate for a year or so with zero balance transfer fees or at least a cap.  The last one though had 0% for 12 months and a 3% fee and no cap which I didn’t mind paying. as the balance was significantly lower.  While I was paying the minimum, occasionally I would pay a small chunk at the point of switching balance transfer offers. 

Second, I signed up for my company’s employee stock purchase plan.  I started out slowly with 1% but soon bumped it up to 5%.  Twice a year, stock was bought and I could either turn around and sell at a 15% discount to the current price or save it.  I just saved and built up my stock.

As I continued to pay down the cc balance I continued to save my stock purchases and my goal was to keep going until my stock balance was equal or more to my cc debt.  Luckily, the value of the stock kept rising, far greater than the 15% I would have gotten if I sold right away.   Plus, the last 0% offer would have ended on June 1st so I either needed to pay it off or start looking for another balance transfer offer.  I’m glad I finally paid it off.  If feels great to be one step closer to being debt free.  I will continue to accumulate my stock from the plan and use it to pay big chunks of student loan debt.  Goal:  To be completely debt free (except mortgage debt) by the age of 40.
 
“You can’t direct the wind but you can adjust the sails.” – Anonymous

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