Indebted

I made the mistake of telling my mother I have credit card debt. As I get older, I keep having these moments with my mother where I think honesty is better than quiet agreement...I'm pretty sure I've been sorry every single time. 

A wise friend once told me that when it came to my mother, if I was being honest just because I didn't care, that was one thing, but that if I found myself wanting to be honest in an attempt to change her mind about something, it probably wasn't worth it. So true.

So yes, the credit card debt. I'm not happy about it. Not proud if it. But, hey, shit happens. We make choices, we live with the consequences. To my mother, however, admitting that I do not pay my credit card in full every month is the equivalent of telling her that I have an illegitimate baby in my basement. Seriously. It's like she can't even look at me lately without being reminded of the sins I have committed. 

Despite being an adult and having gone through enough therapy to know that she has unrealistic expectations, my mother's disdain threw me into such a tizzy of anxiety that I considered deleting the rest of my 40 by 40 list and replacing it with "Pay off credit card." I didn't, of course. But seeing as neither my husband or I are on the fast track to increasing our incomes dramatically, I might need to push those trips to Paris, Italy and Joel Robuchon to my 50 by 50 list...hello, living within my means. 

These are not real problems, I realize. It's just me accepting that living on a single income is not the same as living on a dual income. It's just me applying what I logically know to be true to my emotional desire to err on the side of fun rather than fiscal responsibility. It's the whole live-for-the-moment dilemma, right? Because to truly live like there is no tomorrow is only fun until you wake up and realize there are a whole lot more tomorrows and you've got bills to pay. Sigh. Responsibility is a bitch. 

On the bright side, this will force me to resurrect my efforts to invite people over more and eat out less. And not impulse buy at Target. And not plan vacations until I can afford to do so. Ok, that last one makes me cry a little. 

Poor little vacationless me against the big, bad credit card company. I will be triumphant. And it will be worth it. And all the world's creatures will rejoice in the knowledge that there is more than one way to live your life -- no matter what my mother thinks. 

Cut Up the Cards

So I already hate credit cards, but today I'm directing my disdain specifically toward Citibank. 

Almost two weeks ago, we made a big (embarrassingly big) payment to Citibank, with the intention of just about paying off the balance (woohoo!). For various reasons that I won't get into, we had to mail the payment rather than using the standard online payment method. So I mailed it, I waited a week (because somehow everything takes at least a week)...nothing. 

So rather than risk getting a late fee and whatever crazy APR increase they would throw at me, I went ahead and paid the minimum due online when the due date came. The day after the due date, I checked the account and found that Citibank had just been sitting on my payment for 4 days. So rather than post the payment to my account when they received it, they waited until the end of the day on my due date and then post-dated it. So that second payment - the one that was supposed to pay for our groceries - was unnecessary. Awesome. But hey, at least the card was paid off, right?

Well, that was all last week. This Saturday, we needed to buy concert tickets. Turns out one of the teenager's favorite bands happens to be coming to town on his birthday. (How much easier does gift giving get?) Tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. The boys have T-ball from 9-10ish a.m. on Saturdays. Good thing the husband just got his fancy iPhone. The future is NOW! He can buy tickets while sitting at the T-ball field!

Alright, so mobile interfaces tend not to be great and pretty much everything with Ticketmaster tends to completely suck, but we were still in good shape because I have an account with Ticketmaster, which includes saved mailing and payment info. Yes, it was the recently paid off credit card, but I figured we could just send them the money for the tickets. So the husband gets on the site, he gets floor seats to this stadium show, he zips through the checkout screens using all my stored account info and then BAM - "The credit card you entered is not valid." WTF?! Despite attempting to enter his check card info as quickly as possible, we missed our time window and Ticketmaster gave our floor seats to some other lucky soul. The good news is, the seats we ended up getting are still good, but not floor good. 

I called Citibank and was informed that because I made an "unusually large payment" AND made two payments in the same week, there was a temporary hold on my account. The payments were posted last Wednesday...today is Monday. Okay, I said, I guess maybe I can understand if you want to hold the big payment (although I know it already cleared), but I also made the minimum payment through the online payment system. It's cleared. The account is in good standing regardless of whether the mega-payment has cleared. 

"Ma'am, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. It's standard procedure. It could take 7-10 business days for the hold to be removed." I was not aware that paying off my card was considered "high risk" activity.

Yes, I pointed out the way they punish their customers for paying off their balances. Yes, I even told her that they cost us our floor seats. And yes, I knew it was all a waste of breath, but I had to say something. Even more aggravating is that I know I came off as a crazy woman desperate to use her credit card, when in fact I don't even want to use the credit card now...I wanted to use it Saturday. And I'm willing to bet that if I hadn't made any payments, they would have been happy to let me keep using it, to incur late fees and over the limit fees and anything else they can think of. 

So, Citibank, I officially hate you. I will find another option for emergencies and be free from your oppression. I realize I'm just a drop in your greedy bucket, but I'm one less drop than you had before.

And you owe me two floor seats for Rage Against the Machine. 

Stopping the Insanity

That's what the husband and I ate for dinner last night. It's a boat...a boat of sushi. It was his birthday, so I'm not going to bother feeling guilty about it (it was delicious, btw), but today the insanity comes to an end. No more birthdays for awhile and no more excuses for crazy spending.

Inspired by this CNN Money article and my desire to be able to actually afford to take the kids on vacation this winter, I am pledging to exercise the willpower that I know I've got inside of me somewhere. I got some good ideas from a few of you regarding lowering my grocery bill (thanks!), so I figure if I combine those with cutting up the credit cards, not eating out, not signing my kids up for any additional summer activities and resisting the Target impulse buys, we should be on our way to paying off our debt and having a real travel budget. 

Send me your good thoughts. It all sounds very simple, but restraint isn't my forte.  

The Spending Diet

As we near the end of birthday madness, I'm renewing my efforts to become a teensy bit more financially solvent...or rather, I'm trying to find ways I can save some cash without drastically altering my life. 

We're not exactly one of those families you see on Oprah yet -- you know, the ones who don't have health insurance, but the mom gets her hair and nails done every week...or the ones who eat out three times a day(!), but we aren't exactly sticking to the budget, either. 

The problem is really that we're playing catch-up, only not very well. When we moved into our new house about 14 months ago, we had fully anticipated selling our old one. It's in a nice neighborhood and just getting its taxable value would have been okay. But after 6 months on the market, we not only hadn't sold it, we had begun to accumulate credit card debt fueled by the notion that as soon as we sold the house, we could pay it off...just one more month, then another. 

Sadly, it's a common story these days. However, having been raised by a mother who became a CPA for fun (seriously, she's never actually worked as one), credit card debt is a source of great anxiety for me...not to mention a really huge drain on the family budget. 

So anyway, the bad news is that we still own the old house. The good news is that we started renting it out back in October, which allowed us to begin our game of catch-up...and that brings us to the present, where I'm trying to find ways to cut our living expenses so that we can A) pay down the credit cards, B) start saving some money, and C) travel. I realize my compulsion to travel works in direct opposition to saving money, but we all have our vices, right? Let's save that one for another blog entry.

Alright, so I know there are plenty of things I could do to save money - cancel the cable, for one. I read The Simple Family and admire Rachel and her efforts to live more simply. But as I said at the beginning, I'm trying to find ways to save without drastically altering my life (and as we know, Bravo, A&E and the Food Network are important to me). I realize this means it will take me longer to reach my financial goals, but this is something I can accept as long as I know I'm moving in the right direction. 

So my current focus is on how to cut our grocery bill. I am really bad with coupons - I like clipping them, but am notorious for forgetting them when I go to the store. I'm considering using a grocery delivery service purely because it eliminates the possibility of impulse buys -- and since I do my grocery shopping at SuperTarget, the impulse buys can get out of hand. 

I'm also looking for cheap meals I can make that my kids will eat...and I'm trying to break out of the spaghetti, mac 'n' cheese, chicken nuggets and repeat routine. Unfortunately, my little Owen fears unknown foods so unless it can be marketed as one of the aforementioned foods, it could be a battle. Is a diet of ramen and soup the answer? Is winning the lottery the answer? Is getting some willpower the answer? Maybe, maybe and probably...but I'm hoping one of you smart people has a more useful suggestion.