Posts filed under 'Simplifying'
Our Decorations
Instead of the traditional holiday decorations this year, we hung a lighted garland on the wall and put ornaments on it. We didn’t get a tree because the piano took up our tree space. I’m not complaining, though; a piano in exchange for a tree is a good deal.
The nice part about the garland is that it’s so small that we only get to put our favorite ornaments on it — none of those fillers that we’d normally hide on the back of the tree.
The only bad part about the garland is that we don’t have a designated place to put presents this year. Most of our presents are for other people, so it’s not a big deal. We’d need to figure out something awesome, though, if we had kids. Plenty of time for that!
4 comments December 22, 2008
Getting out of Debt?
(source)
Holy crap guys, I just renegotiated the APR rate on one of my credit cards. I feel all badass now. Ha! It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be; here is how I went about the process:
First, I read the I Will Teach You to be Rich and Get Rich Slowly personal finance blogs. I’m not looking to get rich (at the moment), but they have lots of good tips on getting your dollars in order so you can pay off debt quickly and save for the important things in life. And what with student loans and all, we have quite a bit of debt — plus now we’re saving for a wedding. Sheesh! So sue me, I read personal finance blogs. They’re fun.
Well anyway, I read those blogs and they built up my courage for calling my credit card company. Then I did a little research and figured out the difference in APRs between my two credit card companies — would you believe I was paying a higher APR for the credit card that I’ve had for the longer amount of time? We’re talking twice the APR of my other credit card.
Then I read some other articles about renegotiating the rate. Here are the basics:
- Try not to ask yes or no questions because it’s easy for them to say no (i.e. Can you lower my APR? No)
- Back up your request with all the good deeds you’ve done for the company like paying on time, paying above the minimum every time, or having a long history with the company
- Be polite
- Do your research and get rates from other comparable credit card companies, and then threaten to switch to another credit card if things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped
I didn’t have to resort to that last bullet point there, but I did stick with the first three. As it turned out, my APR jumped because I made late payments two months in a row. Of course, then I switched to automatic payments when I realized I was continually late, so I’m pretty sure it’s not going to happen again.
Once I called, I spoke with a very nice man (and called him by name). He lowered my APR to its original rate upon request — he called it a “one time courtesy” (ooo, threatening). Then I asked if he could do any better, and I started telling him about how awesome I was as a customer and how I have a lower rate on a different — and much better — credit card. He either didn’t want to hear it or realized I wasn’t going to give up easily, because then he lowered the rate even more.
I realize now I should have said something like, “thank you, but I was really hoping to match my other credit card’s APR. How can we make this happen?” but I got too excited and said thank you and goodbye instead. Whoops! I still got a much better rate. Would I have reached that shiny goal of a matching APR? I guess we’ll never know….
2 comments December 9, 2008
