Small Victories

The first kind of cool thing that happened this week was that I needed new front brakes on my car (not the cool part), and I had the CASH ON HAND to pay for their installation, plus an oil change (the cool part). That has NEVER happened to me, the being-able-to-pay-cash-for-an-emergency thing. I have ALWAYS had to resort to credit cards. I was probably a little disproportionately proud of myself.

The second cool thing is that I paid off two credit cards this very morning. They weren't the big, multi-thousand-dollar balance credit cards. But they were credit cards just the same. Take that, Sleepy's and Old Navy (Incidentally, I paid off the Sleepy's card within the 12 months of free financing they offered me when I bought my new mattress last summer, so I lost no money to those credit card people! SQUEEEEEEEE!).

And the third cool thing is that I tallied up my current credit card debt on the handy spreadsheet that my husband and I made up at the beginning of February, which was designed to kick us in the head and make us puke and show us that perhaps we should do more saving and less spending, at least for a little while, you don't need those shoes, m'kay? And I have paid off roughly $1000 of credit card debt in the past two months. And in that time, I have also saved $1000 to put toward our rather large federal tax bill (Let's just say that claiming 4 on my W-4 was the WRONG THING TO DO, so now we are paying for it, and I already changed my federal withholding for this year, thanks!).

I am sure the pride will wear off by the time I get my next credit card statement, but for now I feel good!