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?

I have been home from work for two days sick. I have an awful headache and other things on my head hurt. I hope I don't have a sinus infection. If its not gone by tomorrow off to the doctors I go. Fun, fun, fun. It does bother me just to stare at a computer, so I will make our financial update for April short.

1.) Pay off credit cards # 4 and 5. #4 has been gone for a little bit. Already sent our first snowball payment to #5. We have paid over a 1/3 of our total credit card debt off in 6 months, which is not too bad.

2.) Have emergency fund at $1500 by end of year. We are now up to $1212.75. Right on track to meet the $1500 goal by the end of the year, probably sooner.

3.) Buy chest freezer and stock with deals for dinners at home. Been done and keeping it full.

4.) Stop buying certain pre-made products and make them from scratch at home.

Laundry Detergent - Just a few bottles left and then we will start making it from scratch.

Fabric Softener - Still got quite a few of them left. I cut them in half, so they last me pretty long.

Household cleaners - Still have alot of those. I wouldn't be surprised if they last me until the end of the year.

Syrup - Still making it from scratch. Would like to get some flavorings to try different syrups flavors.

5.) Clean out the garage and sell unnecessary things. Still trying to sell a tv we have. We put it on CraigsList but have gotten no bites yet. Lots of people selling things on there right now, so its hard to stand out. We may need to have a yard sale when spring kicks in.

Thankfully we had a nice tax return that went directly to card #4. I usually get a nice fiscal bonus from work in April/May every year. That would have made a real nice dent in one of the cards. I now say "would have". With the economy, the fiscal bonus' are good as dead. All pay increases and annual bonus's are on hold too. My review is not until October, so maybe if I cross my fingers real hard, the economy will get better by then (yeah right).

The lovely, and I say that with utmost sarcasm, Governor of NJ has made his suggestions for the state budget and one thing that will affect us is the elimination of a rebate we get every fall for our homes. Since we make above a certain amount (and believe me it ain't high), we will lose out on that check this year.

So there are a few extra's that are now gone for now. I should have known this would happen when I decide to pay off my debt. But we still have jobs, so thankful for that. I persevere, whatever I got I am putting towards out debt and one day, oh one day, we will be credit card debt free.

Four days into the new month and I almost forgot to do the financial update.

1.) Pay off credit cards # 4 and 5. #4 is almost gone. Just one more payment next week and I think it will be history. Then onto #5. Just in case you didn't remember before there are seven to get through before the end.

2.) Have emergency fund at $1500 by end of year. We are now up to $1051.24. I just increased my savings deposit starting with next week's check from $50 to $80. So we should have no problem with the $1500, in fact I am aiming for over $2000 by the end of the year.

3.) Buy chest freezer and stock with deals for dinners at home. Mr. Freeze is full and happy. My freezer upstairs actually could use a few things. We continue to make dinners from home. We really have even stopped the Starbucks dates since we are now biking on the weekends. This weekend it is supposed to be in the 60's and 70's after getting 8 inches of snow. So we are so excited to get out on our bikes.

4.) Stop buying certain pre-made products and make them from scratch at home.

Laundry Detergent - I would say I still have about 5 bottles of pre-made detergent left. Once they are gone I will buy no more. So maybe by the summer we will be into making the detergent from scratch.

Fabric Softener - Still have a few boxes of those left and since I tear them in half and only use half in each load, I will probably not be through those until the summer too.

Household cleaners - Still have alot of those. I wouldn't be surprised if they last me until the end of the year.

Syrup - Still making it from scratch. Would like to get some flavorings to try different syrups flavors.

Pasta Sauce - This one might be a problem. I could make sauce pretty cheap from scratch, but my husband is very particular on sauce and the only homemade sauce recipe he likes involves a ton of ingredients and gets expensive. Plus I have found some amazing deals on canned sauce that is cheaper than anything I could have made. So that one we will play by ear.

Meatloaf - I actually haven't tried to make a bunch of this in advance yet. I think I need to stock up on some more ground meat first.

5.) Clean out the garage and sell unnecessary things. With snow still on the ground, and my brothers things taking up residence there, I don't see a yard sale happening anytime soon. However I do have a TV and a cabinet I want to sell. Supposedly a friend of mine has a friend who wants the TV. If I don't hear from them soon, I am going to have to sign up for Craigslist or something and sell it there.

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 get up for work every morning at 4:30am, yes, that early. I take the dog out, feed the pets, exercise for 45 minutes, eat my breakfast, get shower, get ready, drop the dog off at my mom's house and drive 25 minutes to work. Every day. Five days a week. Yes, I'm very grateful to have a good job, but it still gets tiring, I don't go to bed early enough and I don't get alot of sleep.

On the weekends I haven't been getting too much extra sleep due to wanting to be up early to go to SuperFresh on Saturday's and get some deals and the newspapers at the dollar store. Then getting up early on Sunday's to go to ShopRite before the crowds get there.

This weekend I have had it. I needed some sleep. So I've decided to skip SuperFresh and sleep in late. I got up at 9:30am. Which is late for me and I loved it. Then I got to exercise, make breakfast and hang out with the family. I am just going to get my whole $50 of my budget at ShopRite tomorrow morning like I used to. Sometimes you just have to cut a few of the bargain things down. Time is just as valuable as money, and rest is even more important.

I would love to do this every week, but SuperFresh just has too many good meat deals. So I've decided that when we need meat to just add them to my Sunday trip. Go to CVS first, then ShopRite, and then SF to keep my Saturdays open.

I also sent two big payments to card #4, so its slowly coming down. I hope to have it gone by the end of February or mid-March with our tax returns, plus some of that will go to card #5 too.

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!!!

If anyone watched Oprah yesterday she had Suzie Orman on, with her 2009 action plan.

On top of the normal ways in which you need to pay off your credit card debt, she made some suggestions at the end of her show to the audience members who had a combined total of 2.9 million dollars of credit card debt.

1.) Don't spend money for a whole day (they nodded)

2.) Don't use your credit cards for a week (they nodded)

3.) Don't eat at restaurants for a whole month............OMG!

You would have thought with that last one that she asked them to sacrifice their first born child. They were outraged and upset and some just plain refused to do so. And I was horrified that this small sacrifice to give yourself financial freedom did upset them so much.

Now that I have thought about it today, I think some people misinterpreted who she was directing this to and people in the restaurant business weren't happy too. But she wasn't telling people who are financially sound, have no debt and good savings to not go out to restaurants. She was telling this to the people that had mounds of credit card debt and are one paycheck away from a financial disaster.

But I still think there were several there who did understand who the message is for and still refuse to take the steps necessary to get yourself out of trouble. The show did make me feel good that I was 4 months head of these people, and were already doing everything she suggested. I only hope the light goes off in their head to finally make the changes they need to.

As I sit here watching my husband play Guitar Hero on New Year's Eve, I figured now was a good time to post my financial and in general goals for 2009. It is insanely windy and cold here so we decided not to go see the fireworks and just stay in our warm home.

I started this blog in September, so its nice to to be around to start a whole new set of financial goals for 2009. Its amazing though, I just paid off credit card # 3 this morning and by the evening I was bummed out again thinking I still have so far to go and worry it will get harder and harder soon to come up with the extra money to knock it down. But again this is not a race but a marathon and the end results, no matter when they come will be worth it.

Goals for 2009

1.) Pay off credit cards # 4 and 5. My first two I would calculate as having relatively small balances, the third card a bigger small (if that is a word). The next two are in the medium range. I think setting a goal to pay them both off this year is definitely an achievable goal, as long as our income stays relatively healthy. I hope to be on card #6 by the holidays in 2009. I have been hesitant since I started this blog to list how much each card's balance is. Not sure why, maybe one day I will.

2.)Have emergency fund at $1500 by end of year. In 3 1/2 months I have gotten it to $475.00 just by putting $50.00 in per paycheck. So not too bad. I think $1500 is definitely achievable. If my husband's job goes full time then we will have him do the same too and then we will definitely reach that goal.

3.) Buy chest freezer and stock with deals for dinners at home. Well this one is already half way done. My freezer is in, we pick it up tomorrow. I already have a turkey in my mom's friend's freezer waiting to go in there. ShopRite is having a great sale this weekend, and SuperFresh is having triples it should be full in no time.

4.) Stop buying certain pre-made products and make them from scratch at home. Alot of these I still have plenty on stock. So I plan on using up the rest of what I have and then buy nothing but the ingredients I need to make them from scratch.

Laundry Detergent
Fabric Softener
Household cleaners
Syrup
Pasta Sauce
Meatloaf

5.) Clean out the garage and sell unnecessary things. This is definitely a goal that won't be tackled until the Spring/Summer. I live on a street that gets decent traffic when it gets warmer and that really is the time to clean our the garage and sell some things.

Of course I may add some small goals to this as the year goes and of course my current goals are still going strong and won't stop. Its never bad to come up with more you want to do in life.

2.) Budget for these two weeks was bigger due to us hosting Christmas dinner at our house and my husband's love of making a fine meal that coupons can not contain. I let him slide this time, he has been working real hard and he is also sick as a dog. Back to the basics next week.

3.) Made my dog homemade peanut butter dog biscuits as her Christmas present. She doesn't like them at all. My fussy child. She will get some cooked chicken instead. The cats will get cat nip I already had and a bunch of twist ties and milk lids.

4.) Emergency fund is already up to $425.00 since opening up with a measly $20 in September. Not too bad. I couldn't decided whether to do debt payments or emergency fund first, so I am doing both. The money for the EF is direct deposited from my check into the account, so I don't even miss it.

5.)In the process of switching banks. My current bank has some ridiculous fees. New bank is a bank at work program. As long as I have a direct deposit set up with them I get tons of stuff free, including checks, safety deposit box, and no fees on all those things the other bank charged for.

Have a safe and happy holidays everyone!