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Tomorrow We will Pay The Final Personal Loan & Credit Card Payments

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thisismylife
@thisismylife
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Paying off debts while budgeting our way to Spain

Now some of you may remember that about a year ago, I also managed to pay our credit card debt off in full. This was such a big milestone for me personally, as most of it came from crypto earnings and I never managed to pay off any debt of a few thousand dollars by myself, let alone this quickly. It was done within just 2-3 months, I don't remember exactly. Back then our financial situation was not as it is today, but it was already approved compared to the year(s) before. I made sure to take advantage of that as soon as I saw the opportunity. I didn't even bother too much when the car started to have issues and I had to use the credit again, I knew when the time was right, I would find a way to pay it off again. And this time arrived recently.

The order of importance

When budgeting our way to Spain, I first paid off the overdraft at the end of March. Why that one? Simply because it was the smallest debt and we had it in full so it made the most sense to wipe that debt first. So that was one out of three wiped. With the credit card and personal loan left. The personal loan was one that we needed to visit the bank for (again) and to minimize these visits (they take half of your day) it made the most sense to do this one last. Another reason to do the credit card first was the higher interest rate. It was in our own best interest to make sure the credit card got wiped first because every day costs interest.

Clear view & determination

While I sent a bigger amount at once to the credit card account when the fiat salary arrived, I also made sure to add more during the month when my crypto paychecks arrived. I didn't want to waste a day when I had the funds available. On the 10th of this month the credit card statement was generated so I wanted to make sure that before that day, it was paid in full, knowing that afterward, only one interest payment would be needed to get it back to 0. And so I did, the final payment for the interest they deducted was due on Monday so during the weekend I went to the ATM to deposit the final payment. I was very pleased to see the account to 0 this morning! Two down, just one more to go!

Moratorium

While everyone at first was placed under a moratorium, at some point this was only by request if you had a financially rough situation or if you had at least one child below a certain age. During this period the bank sent us letters to update us about the interest and amounts being parked on a separate account. We only received these letters about the personal loan and overdraft for the full 2 years. Yesterday I discovered (while asking them for an overview) that the credit card also has an interest amount parked which we didn't know existed as we never received the letters! Not one! Turns out that after all this time and several visits to the bank for this matter, they still have an issue in their system where part of the system sees our old address, while another part of the system sees the new one. Guess the old landlord has a TON of our letters! I asked about it a while ago, she said nothing. Liar! Anyway, thankfully this amount we didn't know about was "only" 250 euros, I decided not to make a fuss, transfer the extra needed funds to the bank and just accept it as it is.

Mistake after mistake

This "change of address" matter was an issue on the first move as well, and I'm honestly baffled that this is possible! The last time they also "forgot" to mention another amount we needed to pay with the overdraft so I had to transfer a little under 200 bucks to the bank as well. While telling them it was going to take 2 days, they STILL deducted the money the next day, causing us another bag of interest for an overdraft we weren't allowed to have. They charge you big for this when it happens.
Thankfully, I think this will be the last mistake they can make, tomorrow all the needed funds are on the account and my boyfriend can finally go there to give them permission to deduct the amounts, and once that's done he has to come back one last time to close the bank account.

It feels good to pay off debts

I don't regret getting into them here in this country as we simply were promised a lot of funds with the new job that my boyfriend took at the time, but they were false promises. This was our way to make sure we could actually rent something at the time. After that, you get used to the fact that you have the credit and so it was spent. In a way the moratorium was a blessing because the overdraft was cut off, therefore we had only 50 bucks overdraft left and the rest was placed under the moratorium. The only big cost we had was actually the credit card with the highest interest. I'm very happy that we can now actually have a fresh start and we can close these accounts with pride.

Another step closer to our emigration next month! Spain, here we come!

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