I HATE AT&T Universal Mastercard

Those bastards! I have been with them since I went to Spain as a college student in 1992 (or so). I have transferred 2 other CC balances to them so they can be paid off at the APR rates of 6.9% and 4.9%, respectively. I had another portion with them that was at a reasonable ~10%. Well, logging onto their website today I see that my next payment due is more than I expected. A closer look at the most recent statement revealed that the 10% portion has just jumped up to 17%!!!!!!

I called them up, furious and demanded them to lower that rate. They said I can either accept the new terms or I could reject them. If I chose to reject them then once my card expired it will automatically be cancelled. I said fine, I reject!!! Assholes. I am not surprised though. Like Dave Ramsey says, they are all snakes.

Budget done thru Sept. 2009

I have done the household budget through mid-Sept. 2009. I tried to remember occasional irregular payments (life insurance, vehicle inspection, etc.) but I am sure I forgot one or two. The final adjustment I've made is to add 2 haircuts for me since I totally forgot about those. Regardless, the budget looks pretty good and this is with lowballing DH's take-home salary. In other words, the budget has a good amount of wiggle room and this is a worst-case scenario so I do feel like breathing a big sigh of relief. Of course, it is not set in stone since I am also guessing at how much extra $ I will be bringing home during the summer when I start to teach skin care classes at the public libraries again. I should start to get bookings for those hopefully this month and next and then we'll have a much better idea of what my extra summer income will look like. Speaking of which, I did give myself a sizeable raise. Last year I charged $80/class. This year I raised it to $95/class. DH agreed that I should keep it under $100 for the psychological effect, but that's still a good sized raise! So last year I did 13 branch libraries; perhaps with my increased fee I'll do less this summer but that is all right with me since that is a lot of work running around and doing all those classes!

Gas is $1.39 near my house so again, one reason the budget is looking good is that I went ahead and reduced my gas costs projection a little more in the beginning of 2009 since it does not seem that gas prices will jump anytime soon. I still have my summer gas costs at a high rate, however, and I am NOT adjusting those. Credit card APR's and payments are currently still low and the first jump in rates does not occur until April. The next APR jump is in May and the final one is in Oct/Nov. But I will worry about those when they happen. Who knows, maybe DH's salary will increase by then anyway, either to a raise or promotion at work or he will be working at the jail by then making $28/hour.

Regardless, I have now spent one entire year contributing the minimum (2%) to my retirement account and I am itching to get back up to the 10% neighborhood. So when DH's salary goes back up for whatever reason, I am going to open up a Roth IRA toot suite, even if it's just a small one while we're still paying off our debts. So the end of 2009 looks pretty good and we should be completely out of debt by early-mid 2010. Dare I even imagine what that will feel like?