Wealth Today

Many of my readers already know that while I’ve already started my savings plan and enrolled in the company’s 401k, I do have some outstanding debt that I’m in the process of eliminating.

One of the first credit cards I got when I was trying to repair my credit was a CapitalOne card. It cost a bunch for the setup fee and the yearly fee was terrible (about $170-$200 combined), but I had to do something to get things turned around and headed in the right direction…no one else was giving me a credit card, and this was an unsecured card, so I took it.

I’ve maintained that account and watched my credit score climb. They were satisfied with me as a customer and have since offered me two more cards (Platinum Plus Preferred) with a 0% introductory rate and lower annual fees.

I took them up on both offers. That left me with three CapitalOne cards. It’s a hassle to manage all of those accounts and also pay for the annual fees, so I decided to do something about it.

After the success with lowering my interest rate on one of the cards, I thought maybe they could offer something as far as merging the accounts. I called and they were very accomodating. I combined the two lower credit limit cards into one and waited for that process to complete.

Today, I called to combine the remaining two. Those two calls took less than 20 minutes combined and saved me $90 this year. Yes, I’m really happy about it.

JLP probably has one of the best all-in-one personal finance posts I’ve seen all year. This post is about making personal finance resolutions for 2006. He enlisted help from Jim, FMF, Flexo, Smarty, Jose, Alexander, and Jonathan. Together, they cover emergency funds, getting out of debt, 401ks, IRAs, budgets, and personal finance statements. It’s worth your time to read every bit and reference every link.