Debt Be Gone.

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Took steps recently to get myself clear of some high interest debt in the short term, and debt altogether in the mid-term.

Due to my hard work getting my FICO score to a great place over the last couple years, I've been getting some really good offers for various credit cards. I got an offer for a Citi Diamond Preferred balance transfer card, and took them up on it. $8500 limit, 0% interest for 18 months on transfers and purchases and no annual fee.

The card arrived today and I immediately put it to use. I did a balance transfer on my Discover card, getting rid of a 24.5% interest rate, and am sending a check tomorrow to my car finance company to pay off my car loan, getting rid of 13% interest on that. So altogether I'm transferring around $5500 of interest-sucking debt and turning it into 0% debt, for 18 months.

So I have 18 months to pay off $5500 of debt while having no interest on it, that works out to a $305/month payment for those 18 months. I was already paying $215/month in payments to those two, so that's really not a big hit at all, and then by mid-year next year I'm 100% debt free.

I may take a slight hit to my FICO score by moving the car loan from secured to unsecured, but honestly that's fine as I have no plans to do any kind of big purchase that would rely on a FICO score anyway. This means I keep my current car at least until I have the Citi balance paid off, and then I may look into a buying a new car sometime next year, we'll see.

So what does this all mean for Vegas? Not much, really. I still have just the 3 trips for this year planned, if I feel like I'm OK on money when I'm back from the March trip I may see if I can squeeze in one other short-ish summer trip. I continue to use the Mlife Mastercard for almost all daily purchases, and have been paying it off every month so no interest hit there while racking up sweet, sweet Mlife points for Vegas. I also just completed my taxes and will be getting back around $2300 from Fed/state so that's a plus. It'll make the save that much less painful for the March trip.

So all in all the financial news of the FYMYAWF world is good and headed for great.

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