A finance question

On August 6, 2015August 5, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy15 Comments

Just curious what the hive mind thinks:

I owe a moderate amount on a credit card that I used to owe five figures on. I can pay it off immediately, but at the cost of maybe a third of my savings. Or I could continue paying it off in chunks and it’ll be gone in between four to six months, assuming I don’t have some sort of crisis and need to use it.

Once it’s gone, I will no longer owe Bank of America a single dime of money, down from a sizeable chunk of my yearly salary seven or eight years ago. This is more than a bit attractive, as thoughts go.

Pull the trigger? Or stay slow and steady?

Regarding yesterday’s posts

On January 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Two addenda and/or corrections, depending on how you feel about it:

FIRST, that my issue with Bank of America was solved without rancor or drama; they just moved the payment. Done.
SECOND, that along with the new cover of Along Came A Wolf apparently came a copy-edit, as the concerns that I had about occasional grammar issues in my (older) version of the ebook were not immediately apparent in the print edition that arrived yesterday. So you can erase that concern, and buy to your heart’s content. Whee!

From the “I’m a dumbass” files…

On January 18, 2015January 18, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy11 Comments

Without getting too deep into my financial status, I will say this: I have spent my thirties paying off less-than-optimal decisions I made in my twenties. The good news is that I’ve been pretty good at being in my thirties, and while I had hoped to be entirely free of credit card debt by my 40th birthday at one point and won’t make that date, I’ll be pretty damn close.

I currently have two open Bank of America cards; one that was originally opened from BoA and one that was actually the first credit card I ever had in my own name and has subsequently been acquired by them. One, the older one, has a zero balance. When I started beating on it, the balance was five figures. The other card is my current “target” card, and a big part of the obscene raise I received with the new job this year has gone to paying off this card. I tend to send them money twice a month a lot of the time.

Furthermore, the paycheck I just received last Friday is technically a “third paycheck”– meaning that I already have a Bills Paycheck and a Mortgage Paycheck in January, so I can literally spend this one on whatever I want. When it showed up, I took what was left in my checking account from my last paycheck and immediately sent it to Bank of America.

Tonight, planning on making another BoA payment now that I’ve figured out what I’m doing with the extra money, I logged in. And noticed that the extra money I’d sent them didn’t appear to have shown up.

A bit of investigation showed that somehow I had managed to make a $150 payment to the card with the zero balance, meaning that that card now has a -$150 balance in my favor.

Bank of America is one of the worst corporations ever, so I expect shenanigans when I try and fix this tomorrow, if I even can, because of course I discover this on the Sunday night before a national holiday.

I’ll keep y’all posted.

Sigh.