Thread: Income<Outgo
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Old 06-02-2007, 06:15 PM   #5 (permalink)
Martian
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Location: Canada
It may help if you swap that cc balance to another card as well. If he exceeded the credit limit then you've probably lost any intro APR (assuming you had one) and may want to look into switching to a card with a 0% teaser rate. A little birdie told me that BofA has a few cards that might be able to fit the bill for you, particularly the Worldpoints mastercard; but then, if you have a preferred bank you want to go with, use them instead. Just remember that most banks won't let you transfer from one of their own cards and lopk out for the bt and disloyalty fees that you may get smacked with.

I encounter folks quite regularly who do this constantly to help get rid of their balances. When one intro rate expires they roll the balance to a new card with a new intro rate and close the old account. It's a bit of extra work, but depending on what APR you're paying you could easily save thousands in the end.

Also, if the spouse is spending so much money on gas, you may want to look into getting a card specifically for that purpose. The problem here of course is that the gas is really necessary spending (unless your spouse is prone to doing a lot of driving with no destination,) so there's not really much you can do about it. I know there's a card you can get through AAA that offers a rebate on gas purchases, something like that may be a good idea.

Aside from that, I'd say it's time to sit down and take a look at your bills. Break your expenses down and figure out exactly what is necessary and what isn't. If you have any extra channels in your satellite/cable package, any extras on the phone you can do without, things like that can add up to a significant portion of your monthly expenses. We usually fall into the salesman's trap of 'it's ONLY $9.95/month' (being a salesman myself, I know how well this one works), but then we have $9.95 here and $9.95 there and before we know it we're in debt up to our eyeballs.
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