Prepping for more Snowflakes

I had some time on my hands so I decided to create my budget in excel. Before I was doing it very simply, and just saving in a word document. So now I have a very simple budget but it's an excel document :) I did create it so it would automatically show me any snowflakes I have based on the payments I make throughout the month. So, I hope that keeps me motivated!

I'm anxiously awaiting my next paycheck, because that's when everything will really be put to the test. This month, I had the rest of the loan money to send out, a little leftover from my ITRFs, and payments on credit cards based on higher interest rates than they will be next month. So, it hasn't been a true reflection of what my income will be going forward.

So, I'm spending a lot of time preparing!

Question: I don't consider myself too clueless on a computer, but where do people get the graphs they use to put in their blog sidebars, to show how much they've paid on theirs debts...like the ones here? http://butwhydoesnt.blogspot.com/

Thanks for any help :-D

It's spring, but I think I detect the 1st snowflake...

Here goes nothing...and everything!

I took my bag of change into the bank yesterday. They have the change counting machines and there isn't a fee if you have an account. So I walked out with $19.63!
I rounded up and just transferred $20 into my savings account.

I don't want to transfer it directly to my credit card yet, because I have a payment due in about a week and I'm afraid they'll think that's my payment or something. Yes I'm paranoid! So I'm going to call them and see what their policy is about taking payments throughout the month. But for now the $20 is tucked away in my savings waiting to be applied.

I'm going to add a Snowflake list to my blog each month so I can keep track ;)

Oh and thank you for the warm welcome from the people who stopped by, I appreciate it!

Off it goes!

I'm sending a check for $7000 to my Bank of America account.

Now that probably sounds a lot better than it is, since it's borrowed money (from the personal loan).

But I have my reasons, mainly the outrageous interest rate on that card.

So, I'll update my statistics to the left when I see it posted to my account!

I'm looking forward to being done with that credit card sometime real soon.

They raised my interest rate last fall because of a random credit screening that determined I was overextended. So, of course the intelligent thing to do when someone is overextended is almost double their interest rate so they can't even afford the minimum payment! Since I was looking for a job at that time, it definitely didn't help my state of mind :)

Took me a long time on the phone to finally get them to decrease the interest rate back to what it was. It's not great now, but at least it's not 31.99%. Ridiculous I tell ya.

First Post

Well, I've decided to get serious about paying down the ugly number over on the side there. I thought a blog would help me keep track. I like being able to punch in lower numbers as a I go along. And if I get a pretty webpage out of it, even better. A little catching up here... I have a personal loan from a family member that I will start paying back in one year. I hope to make enough of a dent in my debt, so when I have to start making payments it won't be as much of a strain as it is now. I also used $1800 of my tax refund to make two payments on my credit cards. ($900 each). I figure that's a good start, I hope to keep the momentum going! I've also deferred my student loan for one year. (Believe it or not, it used to be twice as much as that!) This is definitely going to be a full speed ahead year as far as reducing my debt goes!