praise for my bank

Yes, this is blog-worthy. Life circumstances during the last five years have included more than its share of financial challenges, not the least of which was more than two years of under-employment (more than half of which was unemployment!). Add to that our wedding last year (which was modest, as such financial black holes go), and we've got quite the accumulated debt load.

Last spring I devised a formula for beginning that long road of debt reduction, which has been helped by the income from St. Paul's. We've made steady progress, and each month the picture looks better and better. I try to take advantage of promotional offers when they come, juggling balances and calculating interest rates to give us the best leverage. Another such offer came in the mail the other day with the newly issued card on a low credit limit account. I called to activate the card, and the person at the other end of the phone asked some pertinent questions and then offered to made some adjustments on some of the accounts to try to help us out (I have multiple accounts at this bank: business accounts, cards from other banks that are now owned by this bank, etc).

Thanks to this woman's customer service the balance on my highest interest account has now been transferred to an account with 1/3 of the interest rate! Can we say "thank you, God!" With Christmas in the wind some of our funds that would ordinarily go toward paying down debt will be redirected to gifts. With the adjustments just made to a couple of credit card accounts we won't lose ground on our debt reduction progress. A deep, heavy sigh of thanksgiving is escaping from me in these moments of celebration.

And another thing. I've decided to shift how I refer to this financial journey. It's not debt reduction. It's debt elimination. Ah, I feel even better now.