Feeling so much better about finances

OK, so dreams of owning a home this year were put on hold when we learned our credit score was just a little below what it needs to be to get a home loan now a days.  My biggest fear was telling my parents because they'd be disappointed in me that we got in such a place but the conversation went well.  ((Yes, I'm 35 years old and still worry about disappointing my parents.  I don't think that will ever go away.))

We were given advice on what we need to do to raise up our numbers and surprisingly one of them was Jeff needs more credit cards because he only has one.  LOL, I had the problem in my 20's of having too many!  I worked long and hard and got 20K in credit card debt paid off over the last six years but didn't know that closing them once they were paid off also looks bad.  I should have kept some of them open apparently.  I still have four cards, but of those two have been closed because of reaching their limits back when I was making good money, coupled with late payments when I lost my career job (and lost TONS of my income) as we adjusted to life with my *much* smaller income.

I will say, since that time five years ago we have been living virtually credit card free and just paying those down all this time but with very high interest rates and them being at their limit it's taking a long time.  But just knowing I paid off 20K and only have 3K left is such a great feeling.

To get our credit score up, we used what would have been our down payment and paid almost $5k worth of bills.  OMG what a great feeling.  And we have a plan in place to pay off three of my four cards in the next ten months and cut the last remaining card's balance in half.    I checked that plan with our monthly budget....ok let's be honest I had not really made a budget before just winged it and it worked OK but obviously not well enough.  But the plan is in place NOW.  And that is another good feeling.

And we still have enough left over from the bonus for our vacation in May to not fall off the plan.  IDK, to me this is like telling someone about trying to lose weight.  If it's known, you're more accountable.   So here it is people, I'm announcing instead of losing a certain amount of weight - I'm saying I will lose three of my four credit card balances and cut the fourth in half.