Tuesday, September 29, 2009

What's my problem?

This Friday, I am getting paid and will have about $3k in the bank. I keep seeing that money and wanting to put it towards credit cards. The other half keeps telling me no. You see, in the past I have put a lot of money towards credit cards and then something comes up and we are out of money once again. And then we turn back towards the credit cards. So I clearly see his point.

The plan is to put some money into the savings account so I don't see the money in the checking account. For some reason, that money in there just makes me itch! I just want to put it somewhere else. So we will put $500 in savings and keep paying 3x the minimum payment on one of the cards so that if something does come up, we'll have some cash in the checking account.

Do you have the same problem as I do?

Money Dieter

4 comments:

  1. Yes, I do. When I see cash I think of things I should pay. I am slowly learning to keep a LITTLE cash sitting around. Really, the money you owe others is theoretical money. They hope they will get it, and could take legal action to get it, but it doesn't really exist and is really nowhere in the grand scheme of things. It's not real, actual money, it's not cold hard cash.

    Keep some of the cold hard stuff for yourself so you're never caught without any. You don't want to always have to rely on some sort of borrowing transaction to rustle up some money, should the need arise. Believe me, I have to train myself out of this way of thinking because I generally keep my bottom line zero, knowing I can tap various lines if I need to. But I'm trying to temper that mentality a little.

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  2. Absolutely keep some cash in reserve. Sure, I totally want to toss it at my credit cards, but like you said, things will come up. I also push it into our savings account so I don't "see" it.

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  3. I had this problem when I fisrt started to tackle my debt ($105K). After reading Dave Ramsey's book "Total Money Makeover" and using the zero based budget (http://www.daveramsey.com/media/pdf/fpu_monthly_cash_flow_plan_forms.pdf), I found away to address the issue.

    I keep $1000 in a savings account for emergency. As long as the account if full I put any extra money on payday towards my debt. This has worked for the past two years.

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  4. Right now I keep $1000 in a seperated account (ING Direct). This keeps it out of sight out of mind.

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