I didn't even know what to call this post, as I have so much going on in my head right now.

I had been so torn since hearing Suzie Orman's recent advice that if you don't have a sufficient emergency fund that you should work on that first before paying down credit card debt. I knew she was right considering the current conditions. But it just saddened me to put my debt marathon on hold for a while after doing so well on it in these last few months. It has taken me a few days to swallow my pride and go along with the advice.

So I came home from work with a new yet slightly sad attitude of lets work more on the emergency fund first and then back to the debit snowball. My husband agreed.

Then I opened the mail...............

I'm gonna try to keep this post PG rated. But if this South Jersey girl could curse freely right now, your ears would be ablaze. What I feared would happen did. Bank of America, card #7 and the biggest balance and last of my debt snowball is raising my APR by 8%.

JHGH!!!FJ*%$GY%#TGVU!!!!

I had worried this would happen. That is my biggest balance and is going to make my monthly payment bigger. I had heard the horror stories, kept my fingers crossed. But our luck finally ran out. I so would love to cancel the card, but I only have two cards and don't want to completely kill my credit score. I've even thought about getting a side job to pay this down. But then most people can't find one job let alone, me thinking I can have two.

So, how do I feel.....

I am angry at myself for ever have accumulated credit card debt. What an idiot.

I am starting to regret that I didn't pay BOA of first and instead went for the smaller balanced cards.

I am angry at BOA for knocking people down further when they are just trying to get up.

I am annoyed that I have stop my debt snowball to build my emergency fund faster, although I know its the right move.

I am tired, feeling very defeated and my head still hurts.

I need a few days to regroup, pick my self up, dust myself off and get back on the horse again.

I have been a big follower of Suzie Orman for quite a while. I have read some of her books, watch the show on Saturday night. But I have to say I don't do everything she says.

Yesterday, Suzie was on Oprah with her new advice with the recession. She completely reversed her decision on paying off your debt to building your savings first instead and just giving the minimum to all cards until that is done. I don't think I can completely go along with this. I understand her urgency to get people to build their savings. I just increased again our amount going to savings as we definitely are a long way from our fully funded emergency fund, but I am just not ready to give up on our credit card debt reduction.

I have come so far, and we have both worked hard to get it down. I am loving the results and still feel this is a good part of the process. I still feel we can do both. So as of today, I increase our savings but continue building the snowball.

How did her advice sit with you?

Well I told you how Chase raised its rate on me a little bit ago. That is card #5, so they are next to be paid off. Amex before that lowered their rate on my husband's card, have no clue why, still waiting for them to do something bad next.

Yesterday in the mail we got a nice pamphlet from Capital One saying they are raising our rate due to the struggling economy. But guess what Capital One? You were card #3 and you were PAID OFF in December So I beat you to the punch. Ha ha. That felt good.

Still not thrilled about the raised rate, but at least I don't have a running balance with them anymore, nor plan ever to.

Another reason to get these evil things gone gone gone as soon as possible.

First of all, and for the first time in my life I am tired of the cold weather. I have always loved cold weather. But now I'm done with it. My skin is itchy, the skin on my fingers are split and they hurt and I can't get outside very much to exercise and I prefer to be outside to do it. I don't want summer however. Anything between a nice 50 and 70 degrees is perfect.

And to go along with that good weather, is a new endeavor that me and my husband are taking. We have started biking. Just regular pedal type bikes, not motorcycles. We need more exercise and we need something fun for us to do on the weekends together. Our weekend hobby used to consist of going out to lunch or dinner and then go shopping....hence our lack of savings and credit card debt that we had. Right now we are getting used to the bikes and getting our endurance up. Once that happens and the weather gets better we plan to start taking day trips to free trails and packing nice picnic lunches. So we get lots of exercise, spend lots of time together and it doesn't cost us very much at all. I'm excited.

The payments to the credit cards are moving along. Soon credit card #4 should be gone, baby, gone, and the mission continues to #5. One of the wonderful things about the first three cards that we paid off, is that I got my monthly statement on #3 the other day and for the first time I didn't dread opening up a statement. Because I knew it had no balance. It was so freeing and I felt so in control. Its an addictive feeling and something I want to feel with all the others.

Along with the biking I am making some more changes to my health. I am making myself drink more water everyday and am slowly lowering the amount of sugar I eat too. I do have a sugar addiction I admit it, but I am cutting it down little by little.

Hurry up Spring!

People probably wonder in my grocery budget where is the food for the 7 pets I have. Well in our total budget for our two weeks I have a separate pet budget of about $10 or $20 to get their wet food, dry food, etc. Once in while I increase the budget for vet visits or flea or heart worm medicine. I have several categories in our total spending budget:

Groceries
Pets
Me
My Husband
Misc

Those are the main categories. But every paycheck I always think ahead to see if we need to add a category for that period. Oil changes, doctors co-pays, prescriptions, etc, are all figured into the budget that day so that we stay in the range we have to. I'm surprised at how much smaller this budget is than what we used to spend with our leftover paycheck money and we seem to have more food and be more content.

Milk. I see so many people having to buy 3 or 4 gallons of milk with their budget. I so feel for them, as they usually have several kids that I'm sure just tear through what they buy. In my household, there is only two us, and I am the only one that drinks milk and it is usually for my coffee or sometimes cereal. So we only need a 1/2 gallon of skim milk a week at the most. My husband hates milk. I won't even go into details of what he thinks it looks or tastes like. But having not to buy much of it, helps on the budget.

Thanks to our tax returns we made some huge strides this week. We sent a huge chunk of money to credit card #4. And as soon as our state returns come in we have it almost gone say minus a hundred or two.

We also sent a balance to our emergency fund to bring us up to $1000.00. Even though in these economic times $1000 in your emergency fund is not all you need, its $1000 more than we had before. So better late than never.

And remember when I told you that our rate on our Amex card went down and that I wasn't going to get too excited, cause I was sure the other foot would drop. Well it did, today I received notice from card #5 (good old &^$##% Chase), that the rate was raising by 4%. Which is more the reason to get working on getting that one down and gone as soon as I have #4 gone.

Nonetheless, I won't let that rain on our parade. We are still making strides and keeping on track to our goals. It has been 5 months since we started this marathon.

I'm not asking you, of course. Don't send me your addresses.

I tried to sign on online about a week ago to one of my credit card accounts. I wasn't completely paying attention when I first typed in the user name and password and I messed it up. Try again it said. I tried again and my fingers must have malfunctioned cause I typed it wrong again. It then locked me out. When I hit the button to unlock the account, it asked me a bunch of questions. One of the final ones being the 3 digit security code on the back of the card.

I don't have the card. I shredded it up months ago and never wrote the number down. I didn't think I would need it again unless I was making a purchase. It won't let me sign back on or unlock the account without the code. So I called them and they told me I must have the code to get back on. So they will issue me another card. Once I get it then I can sign on.

Well you know that as soon as I get the new card, I will just write down the code and then cut up the card. I wanted to send them a nice payment this morning, but I can't do it online, and dummy me forgot to bring in a copy of my bill so that I could call them and pay it over the phone.

So here I have the money and no way to pay them. Guess it will have to wait until I get home, and maybe I can at least do it by phone, or just wait until the card or the next bill comes in.

Can you tell I am getting real inpatient to get rid of this debt?

Note: When I got home later in the day my card had arrived in the mail. I was able to re-register online and sent them a nice payment!!!