Replies to 'Debt'

Hi, just wanted to let you know that cancelling a credit card can damage your credit score.  Yes, for real!!!  Suze Orman said it once and then I just read it again in a magazine. 

I'm using Suze Orman's book The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom  to help me deal with my fears.  I've been spending years getting to this point.  One of the reasons I'm so in debt is because of my unhappiness at my job and with my life itself.  But I did manage to do something every so often to help to get to this point in my life.

SInce chosing this goal, I have learned many things:

1. Don't cancel a credit card.
2. If you owe more than 50% of your credit limit, your credit score is effected.
3. You figure out which credit card has the highest financial charge and you go after that first.
4. And that I know nothing about how my credit score is determined and how I'm going to get it back to the high score I had a few years ago.

Well, #2 isn't the highest, #3 has the lowest balance.  #4 means I'm going to have to learn - luckily, I signed up for something called CREDIT OBSERVER when I started to hear so much about theft identity.  It's an insurance type thing and it sends me a quarterly report of my credit report.

Now that I'm focused on this goal, I can now use their service to help me learn.  They have something called "Credit Education Specialists".  And they have a 1-800 too boot. 

My goal is to pay off the lowest balance and then begin tackling the next credit card.

I think that what shocked me the most was that my credit card companies had raised my finance charge %s and I never caught it.  I had one that was at 6.5% and now it's at 11.99%.  It happened to my mom as well and she has another credit card company. 

Have you attempted to track your daily spending? or are you good at that? My goal is to conquer my MINDLESS SPENDING by 10/1/05.  I'm doing rather good.  This was my first month to track my spending and it was surprising to say the least.   I was really off on "ALLOCATING FUNDS" - but it was my 1st attempt and now, I know that I can be more realistic than when I started.  (It's one of the things that Suze wants me to do.)