CREDIT CARD TOUGH LOVE SAVES $8,000 IN A YEAR We do love a nice saving success story - especially when theres girl power involved! :-D Keeping on track financially can be tough when your partner just isnt on the same page. Heres what happened when Simple Savings member Amanda took matters into her own hands! A few simple changes have reduced our debt by $8,000 in just over 12 months. We had gotten ourselves into a little bit of strife with our credit card - well, hubby had - and I had to do something. I had always been somewhat frugal when it comes to only spending money we have in our account, rather than having a balance on our credit card. The credit card was paid off every month, and we only had it to take full advantage of our mortgage offset facility. Hubby on the other hand - not so much. His thinking process was - no cash? Use credit! So when I had to leave work when pregnant with our third child, I was very strict as to what went onto the credit card, so that we didnt pay interest. Enter mummy guilt for forcing our family to change lifestyle because I left work four months earlier than planned, and slowly the card balance crept up. Hubby was working hard - why couldnt he have the fun things he wanted? When our fourth child arrived only 12 months after the third, no return to work for mum meant an even higher balance on the credit card. And of course, the credit card companies kept sending pre-approved limit increases. In the end, our card went from a $0 balance, to an $18,000 balance in four years! It was ridiculous! I couldnt find work, as I has resigned from my last job to have my baby. So I sat and thought how I could curb the spiral. I went through every account we had (utilities, insurance, savings, credit card) and took a look at fees we were paying. One of them really jumped out at me. We were paying $95 a year to have two cards on a frequent flyer credit card account. It seemed almost too simple - get rid of one of the cards and we would save $95 a year. But better still; as the account was in my name, we had to keep my card. That meant hubbys card had to be the one to go! I also approached the bank to change us to a lower rate card - which they did. My advice - if you dont need two cards - dont have them. It will certainly save you the annual fee but also greatly reduce the likelihood of impulse buys because you have to BOTH agree on the purchase. These days if hubby wants me to use my card to buy something we first have to discuss it together to determine if it is a need or a want - if it is a want, no go! We have reduced our balance to under $10,000 in just over a year, just because he no longer has access to the account!
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 21:31:17 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015