Dimples' Divine Domain
My journey to financial empowerment.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I have been packing up and getting ready for my move on 4/13. Credit card debt reduction plan is going well. I am down to only $5019 on two cards. These two cards are currently in my lock box and will not be used until their balances are zero. The only card I am using at this moment is my old Discover and I am paying the balance in full each month. I have been searching for other ways to lower my expenses each month and therefore increasing the amount I am applying to kill my credit card debt. I think I may have found a couple of other ways: Groceries: In the past month or so my favorite news show, Fox 35, has featured this company called The Grocery Game on their segment called "Does it really work?". Its about a woman who found a way (I have no clue how) to basically use the combination of a grocery store sale and manufacturers coupons to lower your grocery bill. I mean a grocery total going from $42.86 to $1.82. And each time ...

Everything has been working out better than expected this month. I believe I will reach some of my financial goals sooner than I predicted. I have attached a my financial statement for this month below: As you can see I decreased my credit card debt by a substantial amount. I received a large credit from Cingular this month due to some errors on my billing. I did an upgrade several months ago through a another company, WireFly, and for some reason my whole account went to the nut house. After I received my second bill that was over $200 I decided to call in. I was being charged for calls after 9 pm and Cingular-to-Cingular calls. Anyways to make a long story short I received a $387 dollar credit which I had them mail back to me. I used that money and the money I had already set aside and paid a nice chunk off one of my cards. I have already reached my goal on my credit balance-to-credit limit ratio. Everything is looking good and on track except for bringing in extra monthly i...

I opened two savings accounts last night. One will be for my Emergency Fund and the other for my Home Purchase Fund. And I also made $75 in the process. I used ING Direct for my Emergency Fund and got a $25 bonus with only $1 opening deposit. I used Citibank Ultimate Savings for my Home Purchase Fund. I will be receiving $50 in 90 days and I only opened the account up with $1. I will fund my accounts starting next month. This month is pretty tight because of the move and the costs associated. But starting April my plan is to put away $50 a month into each account. Thats $100 towards savings a month. Doing that I should have at least $400 in each account by December. I am not worried because I know I will reach my goal balances in each account by February 2008. I still have bonuses from work (done twice a year and range from $1K to $25K) and my 2007 tax refund to take into account. So I am not worried. I need to focus as much of my left over income towards my credit card debt...

One of the most common things to pop out at me while researching the financial blogosphere was savings accounts with an APY of 4% or more. WOW! I didn't even know something like that existed. And I wanted to hop on one so quickly. I found out about the ING Direct Savings account thru Single Ma's blog and was about to open one up via one of her referral links. ING Direct was offering a $25 opening bonus but only with a minimum initial deposit of $250 with a curreny APY of 4.50%. Unfortunately I had to put a $400 deposit down for my apartment and did not have that extra $250 lying around. Thank goodness I didn't open it up. Looks like there are some banks offering pretty tempting incentives as well. One thing I have learned in the last couple of months since I started my Financial Empowerment Journey is to not be so quick to go with the first choice you see. Research, Compare, and and Choose the best option for you . With that said I have listed the following banks...

Mean Credit Score on 2/2/07 (average of all three credit scores): 595 Mean Credit Score as of 3/21/07 (average of all three credit scores): 644 Yeah man. 49 points in a month and a half! A sista is happy. :-D

I have been looking for many other ways to achieve my financial empowerment goals. One important thing I am looking at is decreasing my expenses in order to increase money available to paying off my credit card debt. Here are the following expenses I can manipulate to achieve this: Rent: I currently pay $800 for a 2/1 in Orlando, Fl which is pretty good when the average is $950. My lease ends on April 30th so I have been apartment hunting for the last month or so. After many rental search engines I started looking at some of the apartment ratings websites. I found an apartment complex who had the highest rating I have ever seen. Out of 30 rating only 1 was negative. I called them and they were renting their 2/1 for $650. WHAT!! I gotta see this place! The complex is made up of beautiful single story apartment homes. The landscape is awesome and they have 3 pools. How can they rent so cheap?? They don't speed ANY money on advertising. None. This allows them to have l...

Another no-no that I forgot to mention on the last post is about closing you credit cards after you have paid them off. Do not close any of your cards right after you have paid them off. I left all my cards open. Some people close their credit cards as soon as they pay them off. This actually hurts you. One of the five factors that credit reporting agencies take into account when figuring out your credit score is the proportion of balances to credit limits on your revolving/charge accounts. Meaning they evaluate your total balances in relation to your total available credit on revolving/charge accounts, as well as on individual revolving/charge accounts. For a given amount of revolving credit available, a greater amount owed indicates a greater risk, and lowers the score. The five factors that determine your credit score are the following: Payment history – 35% Amounts owed – 30% Length of credit history – 15% New credit – 10% Types of credit used – 10% I have a total of 11 cre...

LOL!!! Yeah man! I plan on attacking everything. Now for my credit score. I checked today and my credit score went up another 30 points! Wow. Is it that easy? All I did was pay a little more on my minimums. I can't wait to see what it does after all my balance transfers go through in the next few weeks. You know ya girl is happy! Speaking of balance transfers. Advice for anyone who may be thinking of doing the same thing I did on my last post " Attacking my credit card debt ": Cut up ANY and ALL cards that you have transfered the balance of. I cut up ALL my cards except the 2 cards that I transfered my balances to and 1 card for emergency purposes. And that card only has a $300 credit limit. This way I do not use the cards I just paid off and f-up my whole game plan. Now thats a big no-no. I have been doing a lot of research to help myself better understand the world of finance, credit scores, credit cards, credit reports, investments.......the list goes on an...

For the last 2 months I have paid about 10 dollars over the minimum payment on ALL my credit cards. This resulted in my credit score increasing by 18 points (as 2/28/06). 18 dang on points!!!!! Just by paying an extra $100(total) for the last two months. After my credit score went up the 18 points I decided to try and get myself a new credit card. I know they always say "dont apply for new credit cards" but the purpose of this card is not to spend money but to decrease it! Makes no sense huh?!! Let me go further. Here are my criterias for the new credit card: 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for at least 12 months No fee on balance transfer Awards or cash back on purchases Low APR after promo ends I found all those in Discover Gas Card (not only for gas purchases). I got approved for $4000. I transfered the rest of my credit card balances to the new card. So now i have ALL my credit card debt on 2 cards that both have 0 % APR until April 2008 (I did the sam...

Welcome to my blog! Ya girl been on this serious "BOUT MY MONEY" kick this last couple of months. Main reason I been ghost. (also hired myself a personal trainer...and she been kicking my azz....lol) This blog is to track my crusade to financial empowerment. First let me give you a little insight to how ya girl's mind works. My zodiac sign is the oh so divine Capricorn and this is what the zodiac sign reveals about my money management: Money management is just one of your many strengths, Capricorn. The secret to your financial success is your ability to find necessities at bargain rates. You can then put your extra money into savings accounts and investment portfolios. Waiting for interest to accumulate is no problem for you -- actually, you enjoy the process. Just resist the temptation to confuse your financial wealth with your personal value -- the two are totally unrelated. How on POINT was this ('cept for the last sentence)!?!?!? Some who really know me would ...