September Finances - Sears & Paypal Review

The last time I posted about my finances, more than 300 readers tuned in! Thank you. I enjoy reading about how people make their decisions and also writing about my own.

It's already the 2/3 of September and I am happy to announce that I paid off my Paypal balance of $400 and $450 on my Sears card. The more blogs I read about paying off debt and using the snowball method, the more I disciplined myself to do it. My favorite blog I came across this month was the Millennial-Revolution, which also lead to this amazing one. Just check it out!

Let me talk about SEARS. Sears "promotional" financing is a piece of shit! This was the shit that got my mom when she had a card with them. Good thing I looked into this POS before shit went down. A long time ago, my kind hearted mother got a new fridge for the family and put it on the Sears card. It was a pay off before XX months and get no interests. With the Sears Master credit card, you have your "PROMOTIONAL BALANCE" (PB) and your "REVOLVING BALANCE" (RB). From my chat with Anais of Sears, "Your payments will be applied to the balance that is subject to interest first (your revolving balance). Once that is paid off, your payments will be applied to the first expiring promotion." Then my family went on a roadtrip and charged lots of fuel on there without knowing this. So lets say the fridge was $1000 and the roadtrip charges were also $1000. Sears applied my mom's $1000 payment toward the roadtrip, therefore she didn't "pay" off her fridge within the promotion and then all her deferred interest bounced, BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T DESIGNATE HER PAYMENTS toward it. Like, for real? I can't stand business that clearly sets you up for their gain and charge shit for everything, so I paid off that thing ASAP!

On the other hand, Paypal is a great business that doesn't work the same. My 64 gb iphone6 was purchased through Groupon and paid with PayPal credit, where specific purchases (merchants/stores/webistes) over $xxx are eligible for defer interest if pay in XX months. I had 6 months to pay off $400. Even though I made other charges, Paypal was smart enough to not rip me off by applying most of my payment toward my promotional item and then my revolving/principal. Paypal credit works just like a credit card, but you don't have a physical card to charge items. However, you can use it where it's accepted.

In review of my financial journey so far:

June - Made my first Roth IRA deposit!
July - Met my emergency fund amount
August - Paid off VS, Macy, and Best Buy
September - Paid off Paypal, and UWW loan
Best Buy & Target card increase! Yay!
Made my first direct loan payment!!!
700+ according to TransUnion (scores differ by company)

Goals going forward
October - Pay off Loan 01-12 $821 while maintaining my monthly payments.
November - Save & realistically put money toward my student loans ($23,871.61!)
December - Save & more student loans

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