Seeing as how I just opened a new Chase Cash Plus Rewards Card, I figured if I’m going to do the balance transfer thing I might as well apply for that card right now too so that the ding on my credit score all happens at one time. I believe they group credit requests in a short period of time as one single inquiry, dunno we’ll see.
Well I maxed the $300 annual reward limit on my Chase Cash plus rewards card and I was dissappointed to find out that you can no longer get the card online anymore. Well through a friend I found out that you can still get this card by going into the actual Chase branches. I did so this afternoon and have my 2nd Cash Plus Rewards card on the way.
The great thing about this card is that it pays 5% back on gas and groceries and 1% on everything else. What’s even better about this card is that it treats every single purchase at my local Super Walmart as Groceries and thus I get 5% back on all my Walmart purchases. Seeing as how I am already a Walmart junky this comes in very handy. …
Well it’s been a while since I set my goal of having $100,000 in principal put away for retirement by Dec 31 of the year I turn 30 in and well I figured I should check up on my progress and make sure I am on track.
In my balance transfer post I mentioned that I currently put a big chunk of money away for retirement. I’m married, have a mortgage, and a kid, and well things are starting to get a little tight when it comes to my finances. No longer are there piles of money sitting around in bank accounts that I don’t know what do to with. In fact our cash flow is pretty much dead even or even going in the wrong direction the last couple months.
Well first off I apologize for missing last months report. I just finished up and post-dated the timestamp. You can find that report here. Anyway another dull month for me, but once again at least I’m still headed in the right direction, even if a majority of my gains were due to Roth 401k contributions. I was expecting to get matching funds from my employer for my 401k either last month or this month, but it has not been the case (good thing I decided to leave employer contributions out of any goal setting I did). Unlike some employers who put matching funds in with each paycheck deposit, my employer waits till the end of the year to decide what % they are going to match, during the hiring process they said historically it was $1 for $1 up to 6%, but talking to people last year they said previous year was more like 4%, anyway they decide this in January for your entire previous years contributions. They then don’t actually deposit this money until after the end of the 2nd quarter. Well end of 2nd quarter came and went and no deposit, I’ve sent an email about the matter but it has gone unanswered. Anyway enough complaining about my employer and more about the report.
When we bought our house last summer, I ended up taking out a $16,500 Home Equity Line of Credit to satisfy the 20% down rule and eliminate any PMI charges and secure a lower rate on the 30 year fixed mortgage I was taking out. Well I’ve widdled this down to a little under $6,000 in the first year, but I’ve kind of hit a wall now. Basically last two months I haven’t been able to make anything but the minimum payment on my HELOC and well the damn interest rate keeps going up, so I am thinking about playing the balance transfer game to pay off the HELOC for at least the next 12 months go give us some breathing room and save us about $42 a month in interest charges stemming from the HELOC. On top of that technically my HELOC will owe my Roth IRA accounts about $8,000 come Jan 1, so my HELOC still has some bite in it at this point and I’d be earning interest off of some credit card companies money rather than paying the mortgage company hard earned cash each month.
Well this is my first time hosting a festival/carnival so please excuse me if I mess something up. Anyway we had 28 submissions to this week’s festival. Enjoy!