Its been a busy and eventful month for me.  I achieved a short term milestone, as I had planned, to break under the $40,000 credit card debt level.  I thought this would bring a sense of accomplishment, but the joy was small and short-lived.  $39,204.92 is my new number, and I guess it still looms large.  Still, as I write this, I do feel a moderate level of achievement.  The plan is working, as I've carved away about $24,000 from my highest debt level.

What I think is keeping my mood low is an event that occurred last week.  Bank of America slashed my credit limit from $24,500 down to $6,500.  I find it hard to put into words the mix of feelings, ranging from anger to insult.  I'll blog about this soon, but to make a short story of it, B of A pulled my credit report, and did not like my current level of credit card debt.  I guess that's understandable.  But I've had this account for over 20 years and its been over 4 years since my last reported late payment.  If you read last month's debt report from me, you know I was planning to take advantage of a 1.99% balance transfer rate to cover my $12,000+ WaMu card that is getting ready to come off its intro rate and reset to 22%.  So this action does much more than hurt my feelings.  Its costing me real money.  In talking to the credit department, they can't seem to tell me what debt level they're comfortable with.  I asked if they can restore my credit if I paid off another $20,000 in debt.  They could not say for sure.  

To add more injury to the insult, the change in my credit utilization due to $18,000 of credit removal has caused my FICO to drop 8 points.  Maybe this isn't huge, but as it turns out, I'm trying to refinance the house with the current low mortgage rates.  I currently have an application in with a rate lock of 4.875% for a 30 year fixed mortgate, and they pulled my scores before my FICO dropped.  Hopefully I can get this completed without them having to check my credit again.

One other thing is keeping me really busy these days.  I'm doing a few minor, but overdue home renovations.  I'm painting about half the interior of my house... walls that still have the original 1994 paint from when I bought the house.  I'm getting some color in here, for which the entire family is happy.  If anybody is interested, I'm using Behr paint from Home Depot, and the color is "Spicy Beige", which is a kind of subdued yellow or creme color.  I'm painting all the trim white, and replacing my old oak-colored doors with white, six-panel doors, also from Home Depot.  The doors are definitely the challenging part for me, but I'm getting through it.  The color combination of creme and bright white accents looks very cool to me, and I'm very happy with it so far!

My current account numbers are shown below.  As I said, the plan is working and I just need to keep plugging away.