Friday, October 13, 2006

My stupid way of paying for summer vacations

Instead of using money from savings, I financed my vacations this summer on my credit card. The reason I do this is because I am extremely averse to withdrawing money from savings. So when it comes time to take a vacation somewhere, I put it on my credit card and hope to pay it off as soon as I can.

The average balance in my credit card account since July has been approximately $2,000 and I have paid $88.93 in finance charges to Citibank. It’s not all that much and as crazy as it sounds this is better (for me) than to have taken the money out of savings. This gives me the incentive to spend less so that I can pay the card off ASAP.

Starting with the first paycheck from my new job, I will start try something different. I will put $100 into my savings account and $100 into a brand new account which will be called "accrued vacation & misc expenses account" on my personal net worth statement. This way since I have a corresponding liability already setup and I don't have to feel guilty spending money from this account -- it will have no effect on my networth. $2,400 into this account per month should be sufficient to pay for any vacation expenses I'm likely to incur next year.

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