Post
by Qyot27 » Fri May 20, 2011 1:42 pm
I have a credit card balance of $108.12 (functionally), and once I deposit the money I have on my desk into my checking account, I can finally zero my part of that balance.
I did make a few purchases* against birthday and Christmas gifts, though - if I can pay for those before October, then I'm good. Otherwise, they're leveraged, and I'm considering them as already paid-for right now.
*Speaking of which (and the other real reason I'm posting in this thread), two of them - K-ON! Blu-ray Vol.1 and a Touhou fanbook - came in the mail today. K-ON! was pissing me off, because Barnes and Noble delayed it twice and was going to cancel the order if I didn't tell them I still wanted it (and I had pre-ordered it, so it should have been shipped out on April 26th or just shortly thereafter). They finally shipped it on the 12th. I also pre-ordered Vol.2, and I dread the same delay crap happening to it. Never again will I order from BN.com - if I can't find it in their brick-and-mortar, I'm going to go with Amazon like I normally do.
The only reason I decided to order from them was because I could get 10% back through a Chase Rewards special, and considering the circumstances, it wouldn't have been that much more expensive ($29.91) than pre-ordering on Amazon for $26.99 (except with a crapload more points awarded). And then I find Right Stuf selling it, post-release, for $20.99.
While this is more like a vent, I am happy it finally got here. That's what matters.
More credit card stuffs, to go with the conversation:
I used to get bugged with credit card offers until Capital One approved me for one in 2006 (I will note, though, that I didn't have a job at the time...still don't, aside from some computer tutoring I recently started doing, but that's beside the point). The only quasi-irresponsible purchase I made on there was grabbing a copy of Windows XP Pro Retail just before Microsoft officially pulled it from store shelves in mid-2008. A lone $330 purchase amidst some sparse, random one-or-two-song purchases from iTunes or $13 CDs - the cheap stuff I had the cash for before using the card to order them, with XP I didn't. I also had to use it to upgrade my graphics card and RAM to fix performance issues, and replace my PSU when it blew out last Summer so I could actually use my computer. So in the end, XP itself was probably paid off some time ago even if I do continue to have a balance.
The funny thing is for two or three years there, I only rarely got a card offer. I think the recent credit reform acts had something to do with that. In 2010 it picked up again, as Capital One's renewal was coming up. And now it's mostly American Express and Mastercard wanting me to sign up. Sorry, but I'm not about to pay an annual fee for the privilege of using a credit card.
However, I simply worked out a plan with my grandparents and relatives to do work for them to pay it off, or use extra birthday money and so forth. And well, there's also been some cases of me lending my parents use of the card so that they in fact owe me money which goes toward the payments and provides me with time to earn money to pay down my part of the balance. I've also switched from Capital One to Chase (which approved me last year) because with Chase I earn points, I have a substantially higher credit limit (Capital One's is $500, Chase's is $2700), I have zero interest until next February (I always had 16%, now I think 17 or 18%, on Capital One), $100 of points for signing up which I redeemed for cash and used to pay down on the balance, and only a small fraction of that balance is mine. There's really no reason at all for me to use the Capital One card, and it mildly pisses me off because the card design I requested when I signed up didn't actually get used on my card until I got my new one. 4 years later and they finally give me the right design, and I have no reason to use it anymore.
The better news is that if I can manage to get a steadily-paying job and pay off my parents' side of the balance, they'll owe me enough for me to be able to build a new computer and possibly pay for another course or two toward my Digital Film Production cert that's been on hiatus since the end of 2006 (I need the computer for that first, though). But I'm not hedging bets on that. If I get steady tutoring appointments over the Summer I might be able to scrape together enough for at least one or two of the computer parts, however.
