photo credit: kainr

Well, we did it! I bit the bullet and finally made the last payment on our Home Depot Credit Card.  It made no sense to me to keep making payments each month when we had the money to pay it off, so I just did it.  It was a wash anyway!

I could have kept the money in our ING savings account, but it seems that is not really a high yield savings account right now anyway. I figured that if I left that money in the savings account for 6 months I’d earn under $1.50. Was the hassle of making the payments each month worth it to me? No.

How does it feel to be credit card debt free? Fabulous! To be honest, I feel better than I did when we paid off our student loans. Crazy, right?

Next up: the car loan.  And then we’ll be 100% debt free except for our mortgage.  Woo!

What are you working on paying off right now, if anything?

photo credit: TheTruthAbout…

A few months ago we purchased a new dishwasher from Home Depot to replace the one that stopped working correctly over a year ago.  We picked out a pretty nice model; not too expensive, but much nicer than what we had before.   We got a really good deal on it because we bought it on Black Friday sale, and have been really pleased with its performance so far.  The only downfall about the situation?  We put it on a credit card and haven’t paid it off yet.

Now, before you start throwing stuff at me, I have to explain that we were able to take advantage of 0% interest, no payments for a year from our Home Depot credit card.  We have the money in the bank if we want to pay it off, but I just haven’t brought myself to do so yet.  I don’t want to see our balance go down that much, so I keep making payments on it whenever I get paid.  There’s no question on whether or not it will be paid off in a year.  It will.

I feel so guilty though.  I feel like I should just take the money out of our account and pay it off.  That would be one less thing to worry about.  At the same time though, I prefer having a larger balance in our account so I can’t bring myself to do it. I know that I’ve got money coming in from my paychecks that will go towards it, so I don’t freak out about it too much.

I got started thinking about it today, and then I wondered if it’s more acceptable to have credit card debt even if it’s at 0%.  I still have credit card debt.  I’m not completely debt free.  Sometimes I look at it like I’m not in credit card debt because I’m not paying any interest.  That seems so backwards to me.  I really do have credit card debt!  Does it make it better that I’m not paying interest on it? Mathematically, yes.  Financially? I don’t know.  I know when you look at it on paper, it’s a wash because we’ve got the debt, but we’ve got the cash to cover it as well.  It’s funny how I can look at this credit card debt and trick myself into thinking that it’s not really credit card debt.  Crazy!

What do you think: is credit card debt ever acceptable?