Debt $ense

My dad is very organized with bills. They all go in this organizer when they arrive, and once or twice a month he sits down to pay them.
I’m not organized. My dad would have a fit if he saw the stack of bills and financial papers stuffed into slots of my desk, scattered on the coffee table, piled on the kitchen counter… Well, you get the picture. I usually remembered to pay my bills on time, and I usually had the money available. (The “usually” qualifier would give my dad fits too.)
Fortunately, my company has a deal at my bank that lets me have an account with free bill pay, despite my small balance. Bill pay is a lifesaver. All my bills are automated except my electric, which comes in electronically. Even my rent check is done through bill pay. It saves me tons of time, and I haven’t had a late payment since I started using it.
Online banking also lets me automatically deposit money in my savings account, $50 a week. Since I’m so focused on paying down debt, the savings account is less my real savings than my emergency fund and payment source for things like car insurance that are one-time expenses during the year. It’s also my overdraft protection account, which both reduces fees to the bank and keeps me from rationalizing using my card by saying “I’m not sure if I have the money in my checking account…”
The credit card payments also are automated - obviously, since they’re bills - and like the savings are done weekly. It makes progress more noticeable for me, since pretty much every time I log into the online account there’s a lower balance than last time. It also (slightly) shrinks the amount of interest I pay because the balance keeps shrinking.
As a result, monitoring my spending and saving takes almost no time and I avoid late fees. Automation rocks!
Automating payments is something businesses have done for years by deducting taxes and benefit costs from your paycheck. It’s also the way most 401(k) plans work. In fact, there’s talk of making opting in the default for 401(k) plans. That would mean your employer automatically enrolls you and contributes a set amount of your paycheck unless you ask to opt out. In companies that have those types of arrangements, a much higher percentage of the employees contribute. With Social Security and pensions in danger across the country, more people saving for retirement can only be a good thing.

Welcome!
During the last few months I’ve become more and more interested in debt and personal finance as I try and pay down my own credit card debt. I started blogging about personal finance (PF) on my regular blog, and finally decided it was taking up enough space to deserve its own home.
My personal situation is that I’m a journalist in my late 20s trying to pay down the credit card debt I ran up while trying to live the lives my higher-paid friends have on a journalist’s salary. At one point, I hit about $11,000 in credit card debt, all on one card, plus about $9,000 in student loans. I don’t worry much about the student loans because I locked them in last year at the lowest possible interest rate and had a low enough balance to start that the monthly payments aren’t choking me.
My parents did all the right things - taught me to budget, gave me a subscription to Consumer Reports’ “Zillions” money magazine for kids, and generally educated me about money and how to handle it. I had great habits in high school, but college life wasn’t quite so compatible and I drifted away from them. Now I’m back in the groove, but need to get rid of the debt I incurred while I was young and foolish. (I’m still young, but hopefully no longer foolish.)
In the last year, I’ve paid down about $3,000 in credit card debt, and am on track to pay off the remaining $8,500 in the next 15 months. Read Debt $ense regularly and follow my progress, as well as pick up some tips I’ve learned along the way.