January 31, 2009

Month End Progress

I can’t believe January is already over. As I sit here on the last night of the first month of the new year, I am trying to go back and acknowledge any progress I made towards my goals for 2009.

If you asked me how I did, I would say: “HORRID.” Overall, not much accomplished this month—at least not really anything big that I wanted to work on.

The most crappy part of January that hung over my head was my financial situation. Starting the day after Christmas when Chloe died, the month just did a nosedive into monetary ruin and almost made me see no light at the end of the tunnel (as in, “OMG, we’re never going to catch up!). Chloe’s death, new kittens, new kitten kennel cough, new kitten RING WORM, the aforementioned Comcast screw job and new kitten $200 RING WORM medication was highly depressing. I am ashamed to say that we had to borrow money from my husband’s parents TWICE to get by. I am proud to say that the two times we borrowed money, it was paid back within the following week.

Financially, January has finally ended okay. I have everything worked out for February, and even though it’ll be tight, it looks like we’ll be returning to semi-normalcy by the end of the month. Hoooooray! March will hopefully be, um, good *knock on wood* and I’ll be able to start implementing my plan to pay off credit cards. Oh yah, and saving. My husband and I discussed saving goals, and even though I’m sure his REAL saving goals are games for his Playstation 3, I got him to agree that we need to start saving for a house.

Still on the financial tone, I am a victim of Citi Card’s extremely unfair and ridiculous interest rate hike . I was notified in December that effective today, my interest rate would go from a really great 7.49% to 14.99%. I, like many angry consumers out there, have been a fabulous customer. I’ve never paid that bill late EVER, I always pay early, and I’ve been a member since 2001. Despite that, Citi Group sites “hard times” as the reason….despite the fact that they got a HUGE government bailout and then having the audacity to attempt to buy a $50 million jet . Needless to say, I hate them.

I will tell you that my Citi Card holds the highest balance of any of my cards. I’ve had it for a long time, and it helped me through college and through some tough times last year. It is close to its limit all the time, but I have never gone over. However, after I got my bill this month with the 14.99% new interest rate, the finance charge did push it over the limit. Aside from that, they charged me the $39.00 over-the-limit fee. I don’t think I’ve ever been so pissed. I called them up and YELLED at the lady on the phone, telling her that I refused to pay the fee and blah blah blah. She snootily told me there was nothing she could do so I told her to save her breath and let me speak to a supervisor. I was on hold for about 5 minutes before the next lady came on, told me that the $39.00 would be taken off my account and that I should have a nice day. VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My point was that if I had went out and charged my card over the limit, I would pay the fee. But my rate was at 7.49% before they UNFAIRLY doubled my rate, so I was not going to pay the fee. HA HA HA.

Okay, I’m done ranting about my financial situation. In other failed accomplishments, exercising did not happen once this month. I did attempt to get up at 5am one morning to try that out…boy did that not work at all. I really have no excuses for not exercising—but I will say that work has been insanely busy and that I’ve been completely bushed when I get home.

I didn’t give up soda like I wanted to this month either. As a matter of fact, starting just this past week, I think my consumption had TRIPLED. My diet has not changed, but rather got worse. I am blaming the financial crap on this one due to the fact that our grocery budget has been severely limited.

This post is getting long, so I will just say that I did do some minor things. I have cooked a few new meals, including a delicious Split Pea Soup, a really great Goat Cheese Pasta and some Peanut Butter Hershey Kiss cookies. They all came out great and I felt proud.

Oh yes, and remember that post I made about the IKEA file drawers? HAHA, well, and boy do I feel dumb….today, I woke up early and though “GEEEZE, I really really want to get these stupid papers organized!!!!! ARRRRGH!! I hate you, IKEA!!” So I whipped the drawer open—I guess to make sure the cabinet was listening—and stuck my head in there. That’s when I noticed all these little holes on the side. Yah, turns out that the holes are to stick this little rod that I thought was the stopper thing, and it accommodates all different sized hanging folders!! So low and behold, after three months of wishing I could get my files organized, I actually did it today!! And it felt GREAT.

Here are my goals for February:
#1. For the love of all things sacred, please exercise!!
#2. Give up soda
#3. Start paying off my Capital One card
#4. Just for fun, since I don't have tv: watch 10 movies on Hulu that I haven't seen.

Not much, I’ll start small. So long, January!!

3 comments:

  1. I am glad everything in your life is getting into order. Those credit card companies are really bad at explaining to people why their rate is so high. Sometimes, the rate could go up to 30ish percents. Also, I cannot believe that those Citi group people plan to buy the $50 million jet using the bailout money.

    It's okay if you borrow money from your love ones to get through the hard time as long as you will pay them back. I borrowed my sister and her husband a large sum amount of money, and I just finished paying them back this month. I have to start saving now.

    I am glad the IKEA shelves worked out well.

    :D

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  2. Citi Card explaning it to me wasn't the problem--I knew the rate hike was coming. The specifically said that they are raising the rates on everyone due to economic hardships. I'm just saying it's a bunch of bullshit because the got like $300 BILLION dollars from the goverment....what the heck are they doing with that money?!

    I'm actually lucky, I guess. My rate just went up to 14.99%...but I was reading complaints on the internet and some people's shot up as high as 29.99% which is absoluetely outrageous!!! If my rate was that high, I'd probably be paying $500 a month!

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  3. It's illegal for them to raise the rate because of economic hardship. At least, they can't do that with the old debts. I also watched that Suze Ozman's show. She said that next to the mortgage crisis, it will be the credit card crisis. This is when the credit card companies cut the credit limit, raise the rate or expect the debts to be paid back within 5 years, for instance. Due to the economic hardships, many people have been depending their life on credit cards. Suze also urged these credit card companies not to do the above things because our economy would be in a much deeper hole.

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