In light of the

Slate card mishap, I decided to go a different route. Make money from spending, rather than save money from paying down debt. Odd I know!

I applied for the Chase Sapphire card and was approved. I haven't received the card, but I can see the account online. Odd also.

We will need to spend $3,000 in the next three months to earn $400 worth of rewards that can be redeemed for cold hard cash. Guess where this cash will go? Yep, a nice drop in the bucket on the truck loan when it is all said and done.

We need to pay our auto insurance premium ($420), vehicle registrations ($480) this month. We will also put our regular bills on the card amounting to about $400 per month. I expect we will also use it for everyday spending...so that we aren't tempted to buy something just to meet the $3000 minimum. It should go just fine.

After the rewards? Closing the account ASAP! It has a $95 annual fee after the first year. I may have my husband open one early in the next year, but it will depend on the offer at the time, how this dip works out, and if we think we can meet the minimum again at that time.

I don't really like messing with credit cards, but when you pay them off and earn some snazzy rewards at the same time...it's hard not to! Bring on the $400!!

ETA: It came in the mail today. I activated it. I have changed all the auto bills to be paid with it and charged the electric bill already! I told my husband to use it for everything he normally would use it for until I tell him not to.

As planned, I made an extra principal payment to our truck loan in the amount of $230.05. This is the difference in our mortgage payment because of the lower escrow withholding.

The new balance is 7667.07!! Moving right along.

Yep. We activated and cancelled the credit card all in one day. When my husband activated the card today he asked for balance transfer checks. He was told they would not be available for the account for three months. Not sure why.

He explained we were transfering a balance from our auto loan to the card. The customer service agent said he could help us over the phone or we could transfer online. Since my husband was on his lunch break he picked online to keep the call shorter.

I took over after the activation and set up the online account. I looked for transferring the balance and could tell it seemed to only be for credit cards. We don't have credit card balances!!

I sent an email inquiry to customer service who have now responded to let us know that unsecured and secured loans (auto loans, student loans, and home equity lines) cannot be paid off with this card. Boo! Hiss!

I guess I'm not too savvy with this credit cards stuff as I'd like to think...or Chase just didn't make it very clear. I guess it is all good. I will just keep paying down the truck loan as originally planned.

We would have saved over $300 in interest by changing to zero percent and having it paid off in 15 months. I like to find a way to offset that money...maybe by applying for a card offer with a bonus would be the better way to go!

Are any of you surprised by this turn of events? I feel kind of silly.

We received our Chase Slate card in the mail this weekend. My husband will be activating it shortly. We will be requesting balance transfer checks soon, too.

Chase gave us a $7,500 credit limit, so we will be able to transfer nearly all of the truck loan balance to this card. It has 0% for 15 months and it is free to transfer balances. Yes...free. Otherwise, I wouldn't be transfering this money at all!

This offer is available for anyone to apply on the

Chase website. No guarantee of your acceptance of course. It's really only good if you are paying interest on a credit card or loan and you can pay the charges off in the 15 months. Of course, if you can get a reprieve from any interest for 15 months and move the money for free it may be worth...I'll let you do that math!

I'll let you know how this transfer all works out and how the loan balance reduces to zero...super fast!!

I can officially report we have less debt. The truck loan balance is now $7,897.12! We made our 2012 goal to get under $8K.

We were able to get the balance down with a lump sum principal payment of $1,840 and our regular payment, of which $300.18 was principal reduction.

We have applied and were approved for the Chase Slate credit card that currently has 0% interest for 15 months and free (yes free) balance transfers. Once the card comes in the mail we will request a balance transfer check to pay off this loan. We will have no problem paying the additional balance off in 15 months since we plan to make minimum payments of $559 each month. I would guess we will find additional money to throw at the loan as well to be done much sooner. And no additional interest!!!

Anyone else apply for the Chase Slate card to lower your interest? You can find the offer on the Chase website if want to reduce your interest rate on your own debt.

I mentioned yesterday that the escrow refund check arrived in the mail and that I was pondering applying it to our truck loan. Well, I ponder no more. I just made an online payment towards the loan in the amount of $1840!

It will arrive and be applied Monday along with our regular payment, thus I will estimate our principal balance to be approximately $8,197.30. That's before the regular payment, which will put us under $8K!

I will post again once the payment is applied and I update the sidebar. Wow. No regrets on that. I'm ready to be done with this loan!!

We will begin adding at least $230 extra per month to this loan, which is how much our mortgage payment was reduced because the escrow account was not correct. With our regular payment, that makes a total payment of $559 every month. I'm pretty sure we can find more money each month, too. We just have to keep our "new house" spending low!

The escrow check from Wells Fargo arrived today! Over $1800 that I'm pretty sure just needs to go to pay down that truck loan. I'm going to mull it over a bit more this evening.

The $25 Red Robin gift card I redeemed from MyPoints arrived today too. The other gift card, $10 BP, arrived on Monday. I have already counted this money in the Christmas money.

I did make another ebay sale!! The item I added Tuesday night sold last night and I mailed it today. It looks like I have netted over $97 on five items. One is still listed...and while it has been viewed, no one is watching it. I would guess I have it priced to high.

It is fun to see money coming in the mail, even if it is expected. Did you get any money in the mail or your bank account today?

I am not on a good schedule following our finances lately. I sure hope I haven't forgotten to pay a bill. What I did forget was that the automatic loan payment on our truck occurred on Friday.

We paid $29.82 in interest and $299.31 towards the principal. The new loan balance is $10,037.30.

When I saw the balance, I remembered that last month I pondered sending in additional principal to bring the balance under $10K. Obviously, I forgot that too! I'm thankful that we owe less than we did last month.

Now I'm going to cull my email to make sure I haven't missed a notice about a bill that I haven't paid.

Well, no mortgage payment is due this month since we closed at the beginning of last month. We already paid the interest that was due when we closed. Next month our mortgage payment will be about $1300.

If I was smart and thought it would work I'd make an extra principal payment, but it seems when you move there are so many things to buy! I'd rather hold on to that cash for now.

So far we have purchased blinds, paint, queen mattress and bedding (for guests), a drill, and a high speed router. Tomorrow we have a water softener being intalled. We will rent that, since don't know if we could recoup the upfront cost while we live here. I dislike the extra payment, but I'm sure I can set up on billpay and not think too much more about it!

For now I'll just enjoy the lack of paying a bank for another month! What would you do? Make a payment, partial payment or enjoy a mortgage free month?

I read My Money Blog with some frequency. Today's post is about an offer by Chase for 0% interest for 15 months and a zero balance transfer fee. How often can you transfer for free?

Here's the

link for further details. Definitely read the fine print for all the requirements. This is something you might want to look at before Monday if it interest you, since the balance fee may be changing!

It is a tempting offer for me to move our truck balance, however I'm not sure I'd have it paid off in 15 months!! I have guests arriving today, so I may look into it more on Sunday night and talk it over with DH, who will likely be opposed to opening a credit card.

Does anyone think they might pursue this deal to save some money on debt? Or would use consider the deal to make some money? Or would you avoid it completely?

This tends to happen when one makes a debt payment, your principal balance is lower! Yipee!!

Our regular truck payment posted this week. The principal portion was $299.44. We paid $29.69 in interest, just under $1 a day.

Our new principal balance on the truck is $10,336.61. We are close to being under 10K. Since next months principal payment will not bring the balance under $10K, I might just make an extra principal payment. It's always fun to make the extra effort.

In the upcoming months, I will be evaluating the idea of paying the truck off in full with the cash we have on hand. We are paying about 3%, which is more than we could earn in interest. Will need to decide if it is the right thing for right now.

We did close on our house on Monday. Everything went smoothly. In the end we didn't need to bring money to closing. Thus I didn't need to wire any funds! That saved me $20.

The closing agent didn't originally have record of our $1000 escrow check that we provided when we made the offer on the house. Once that was confirmed, we got money back in the amount of $215.

I'll go into more details about the loan another time. Today let's celebrate the independence and freedom of living in the United States!!

We are scheduled to close at 2pm today! It should go smoothly, but as of this moment we are still waiting on the VA to approve our HUD settlement statement.

Once they do I will know the amount we need to bring to closing. Since we bank online, I need to authorize a wire transfer with our bank. This is going to cost us $20. We had the proceeds from the house we sold wired to our account as well. That wire cost us over $50!

It does make me question whether we should have a local bank. However, even if I had a local bank, I would have already moved and wouldn't be in town to get a cashier's check from that bank. So that doesn't really work either, unless I'm missing something.

Can't wait to get in the house! The cats will move in today, but our household goods are not arriving until later in the week, so we are doing a couple more nights at the hotel.

Our regular payment towards the truck loan was a couple days ago. We paid $31.53 in interest and $297.60 towards the principal balance.

Our new balance on the truck is $10,636.05. Right now this is our only debt since the house loan was paid off yesterday!

It is tempting to use some house proceeds to pay off this loan since it would free up a payment every month. I would at least have to continue to make payments to our savings account to pay ourselves back. Something to think about!

We are mortgage debt free!! Our loan was paid off today with proceeds from the sale of our house. It's an odd feeling. And a temporary situation. We will take on another mortgage in 10 days or so. I'll enjoy it while it lasts!

While we are in the hotel we are taking advantage of 'free' breakfasts and manager's reception dinners. And free coffee all day long. I guess it really is included in the daily hotel rate. We expect most of our stay to be reimbursed by the Army, so it's at least cheap!

DH has taken advantage of the gym equipment and we are trying to get in to use the pool, but there are lots of kids here! And everybody wants to use the pool.

We did end up finding a hotel that will allow pets, so our cats are with us. We paid a flat $75 charge to cover any cleaning expenses. So far they are doing pretty well. One is more relaxed than the other. We like being around them, so it helps us relax too!

Thanks for listening to my moving adventure stories. And fingers crossed we can close by the end of the month!

Our movers arrive tomorrow to start packing our things. It is one of the nice perks of the Army. We have had to separate out some things, such as our clothes we want to wear, a few kitchen items, valuable things including pictures and files.

Our house is a mess, but we are in very good shape.

We decided to go with a VA loan this time. Our first VA loan actually. We also went with an adjustable rate of 2.75%. It will remain fixed for five years and then can adjust up 1% each year after...up to a max of 5%. Considering we have been in our home for 5.5 years and have been paying a fixed 6%...this feels like the best deal given our situation. We don't expect to be in this next location for more than 6 years.

I would have liked to rented, but the area we are moving to just didn't seem to have what we were looking for. We do like owing our home, so that we can really make it our own while we are there.

Off to cancel some utilities and fill out school paperwork!

Our regular payment on the truck loan posted yesterday. We paid $31.35 in interest and paid down $297.78 on the principal balance.

This brings the new balance to under $11K. So excited to meet a milestone. The actual balance is now $10,933.65.

Just four more payments to put us under $10K. I'm always lookig forward to less debt.

We applied for a VA loan and were approved about two weeks ago. My husband needs a certificate of eligibility to complete the loan. We received a copy of it by email today, so we are good to go.

We may reapply for a conventional loan now that we have sold our home and likely won't close on another home until after we complete our current sale. That would mean we would have a much bigger down payment since we would have the equity out of this house.

Decisions, decisions! I guess I need to run some numbers. Fun!!

Has anyone else used there VA home loan benefits? What did you think about it...good or bad?

Good news and bad news! We are preapproved for more debt. We applied for and were approved for a home mortgage. This would be debt in addition to our current mortgage. We didn't make the application contingent on having this house sold.

This is good news because it means we can begin looking for a new home to purchase. We don't have to wait for our home to sell to get into a new home. This actually relieves quite a bit of stress for me!

The bad news is this means more debt. We hope temporarily, but if not, it will be easily covered by our income.

We know we will sell this home and we know that it would could easily be rented. We already have a lead on a property manager that another soldier has been using and is very pleased with while he has been in Germany. We just don't have the luxury of waiting around while it sells before we have to have something else to live in.

We have found in the area we will be moving to that rental homes are very hard to find that accept our two cats! So many people don't accept pets. I do understand this from a landlord perspective though.

That's the news here. Have you held two mortgages at once? If so why and when was it? I honestly didn't think we could get approved for another mortgage loan, but apparently our low credit and minimal debt make it easy.

We made our regular payment on the truck loan, thus the principal balance has decreased again!! We paid $33.25 in interest this month. Our principal balance decreased by $295.88.

Our new loan balance is $11,231.43! It looks like we will be under $11K next month.

Thanks to our regular truck payment the balance on our loan has dropped again. The last payment consisted of $31.90 towards interest and $297.23 towards the principal portion.

The new balance is now $11,527.31.

I would love to be hitting this loan with extra funds, but those have to be saved for moving.

Thanks for the Blogoversary wishes!! So glad you are all here, too.

I cancelled the Goodyear credit card that DH opened in November when we purchased tires and wanted to get the rebates. I didn't have it all paid off until early last month, but it is finally cancelled! It was a Citi connected card, so I just emailed the desire to cancelled and received a response with in a hour or two. Easy!!

Orders from the Army to move should likely come any day. Tomorrow? I'm still working on things around the house to make it in saleable condition.

Today, I'm using paint I have on hand to touch up our kitchen cabinets. If I have time I will also clean up the dead leaves from last years daylillies. They are beginning to poke through on the south side of the house! Spring is here it seems.

Yesterday, we had several pieces of our driveway pumped up with concrete. It does have patched holes that are still drying, but it looks so much better and is not nearly as much of a safety hazard! That will set us back about $400. I am waiting for an invoice.

It has been a bit spendy lately, thus not as much savings to speak of. DH had about $500 worth of maintenence work done on the truck this past weekend. Always frustrating to me when he does this and it suppose to just be an oil change. Ugh!

So, what's new with you? Is it spring where you are?

Funny. I almost forgot to check the balance on our loan after Friday's recent payment. We paid $34.95 in interest, and $294.18 went to principal.

Our new balance is under $12K at $11,824.54. I am really looking forward to a balance under $10K. Getting closer!!

DH arrived home and promptly signed the $160 rebate check from Goodyear. It is now in our bank account. I have made a payment of $300 to pay off the tires in full. We will then close this card. Yipee!!

I was able to make DH's final 2011 Roth contribution yesterday. If you remember, last week, I accidently authorized the buy from a closed bank account rather than our current bank. It took a week for it to correct in their system. Maybe he ended up with more shares for his money than I did. I'll have to check.

My life insurance application was approved and effective yesterday. I signed the electronic documents. I thought premium would be effective this week, but it isn't showing up yet. Maybe it is effective next month? Not sure. At least I can now, rip up the bill from previous life insurance plan. This change has saved me $330 per year. Yes!!

I made the final payment on the CitiDividend card, using our bank's bill pay system. It arrived yesterday and I now have a zero balance. Statement cycles today and I should receive $200 in rewards. I will cash those out as soon as I can and then close that card, too.

I'm feeling better than yesterday, but still a bit worn down. I'm hoping I can rally a bit to enjoy spending the weekend with my husband!!

Have a super weekend!!

I took the advice of a commenter on my blog and made a payment using my banks online bill pay. The payment was for the CitiDividend Visa that wouldn't allow an oline payment until the statement cycled. I made a small payment to see if it would work and how fast. Basically it showed up in on my bank account and the card account the next day. So fast!

I will make the final $500 payment on Monday. The statement will cycle by this time next week. And I hope to have the rewards, $200, available to redeem soon after.

I redeemed my final $5 Amazon Gift card through Swagbucks today. I also got the final collector's bill today, along with the bonus points. Now to save for a $25 or $50 AGC by the end of the month! As of now I have earned $75 in AGC since January 1.

Lately, we have been eating quite a few Lean Cuisine meals. It seems to help me out when I need a break from cooking and with watching calories. We accumulated enough codes to redeem for a lunch bag last night. My daughter picked the color she liked. Based on past experience, it will take nearly two months to arrive. But it is free.

Move Update: We submitted our choices earlier this week, but now are waiting. We don't know how long the wait will be, but sooner is better for us. The first option is to stay here, but we think that likely won't be granted. My oldest daughter has her fingers and toes all crossed for that outcome.

Here's to hoping for a low spend weekend. I do know there may be some clothes shopping involved and groceries. How will your weekend be financially?

I received my rewards check in the mail from my Chase card. I only had to make one purchase to receive $300. I made a couple more, so the actual rewards check was for $305.02.

It's been deposited, and I have made a $300 online payment on our Goodyear Tire account. The new balance is now $300!!

I will save the other $5.02 towards the Christmas fund. I hope to have an update on my total later this week. What is your current Christmas Fund total?

I received another $3 Pinecone survey payment yesterday. This money will be added to the Free Christmas Challenge. I'm also pretty close to redeeming another $5 Amazon gift card on Swagbucks. It's a bit addicting. I'm not sure I can keep up the pace!

The truck payment posted yesterday, with $35.79 to interest and $293.34 to principal. Our new balance on the loan is $12,118.72. Less debt always makes me happy.

It looks like our new window pane will be installed tomorrow. That will be an outflow of $232.04. I have my fingers crossed that the Citi card I applied for might arrive in the mail today, so that I could use it for payment. That would make a nice dent in the $500 minimum I need to get the $200 bonus.

It's cold here and it looks like we'll be getting snow every other day for the next week. I shoveled yesterday, but I need to see if the snowblower will start up for this next round.

Our 2012 financial goals are still not entirely flushed out. But of course, I have ideas. So, I'll write those out here. The problem I have getting these goals firm is that we are likely to move this year and my husband is still living in another state until at least May. We are starting to spend some cash on home repairs in preparation for getting the house sold. There are just a few unknowns! Ugh.

1) Complete 2011 Roth contributions. Used tax refund money. Deadline April 15, 2012.

2) Pay off tires. Remaining balance $600. Use $300 Chase rewards and $160 tire rebate. Remaining balance out of pocket $140. Deadline March 31, 2012.

3) Contribute 7% to TSP. This is on autopilot. Yes, something easily accomplished.

4) Contribute maximum about to our Roth IRA's for 2012. Preferred deadline December 31, 2012.

5) Contribute something to college. $500 each minimum.

6) Save for a Free Christmas. At least this is started. Goal $700 or more.

7) Increase emergency fund by $3,000. Or at least end the year with the same amount we started the year with.

8) Pay extra to truck loan. Get the balance under $10K would be ideal! Oops! I checked the amortization of this loan. We'll be under $8900 by the end of the year without extra payments! So, I'll make it my wish to be under $8K by the end of 2012.

I plan to re-evaluate all goals when we move. Because everything changes. In the meantime, we are in status quo mode. Don't add new debt. Pay the bills we have. Keep as much cash in our pockets as possible.

There you have it. What do you think?

Back in November we bought new Goodyear tires for the van. We opened a credit card with them in order to qualify for a few rebates. The first one, for military personnel, arrived today in the amount of $40. We are still waiting for $160 check to arrive. I think I submitted it a week later, so maybe it will be here shortly.

The Goodyear credit card is interest free for 6 months. I have made one $100 payment. Today I made another. I sent the $40 rebate, plus $10 and change that we didn't have to spend on our water bill this month. A fifty dollar and some change payment in total.

Our balance is now an even $600. I could pay it now, but since it is zero interest, I'm just taking my time. I might pay it all off once we get the final rebate check. And then, of course, cancel the card.

Here's a snapshot of our financial year:

We earned more interest than ever because we invested in the Savings Deposit Program (SDP) available to deployed military members. We earned 10%!!

Here's the interest breakdown: SDP $583.33, Money Market $106.48, USAA $1.97. Total interest was $691.78.

Our emergency fund took a small hit, and is down $737 from last year at this time. I feel okay about that considering we have had additional expenses running two households and buying new siding and a sliding glass door for our home, all of which were much more than $737!

We were debt free except for our mortgage in mid January 2011 until May when we purchased a new to us truck. We paid part of the purchase ($12,000) in cash which was a first for us. The remainder was taken out in a loan in the amount of $14,776.68. Our remaining debt on this loan stands at $12,412.06. We are simply making regular payments until we are back to one household. That loan will become priority number one once we do.

We did contribute some to our girls college educations this year, but not the full $4,000 we planned. We stopped contributions when we split to two households. Their accounts are each up about $1100 each for the year.

We also stopped making Roth IRA contributions in August. We are currently short of our 2011 goal to max out our Roth IRA's by $4,166.67. We expect to make this up with our tax refund. Thus meeting our goal, but later than normal. We did contribute $5072.76 to the TSP and $5,833.34 to our Roth's in 2011, which is $10,906.10.

I compared this years retirement totals to last year and we are only up $11,028.72. At one point we were up over $18K. But you know how the market is!

Since our goal was to primarily keep the status quo, I think we did pretty good. Yes, we took on more debt, but this vehicle will be one we keep for the long term. We feel good about the purchase.

It has been disappointing to cut back on investments, but it needed to be done temporarily to keep from getting into more debt while running two households. We really are cash flowing this adventure and all that comes with it and it feels good.

How was your financial year? Negative, neutral or positive?