Deus Ex Machina and the List

Obviously, I would love to blog more, but life is getting in the way.

Even though I am not blogging as much as I used to, I have been taking the time work on writing a book that has been in my head since I was in college.  Well, a different version of a story that I’ve always had in my head.  It is somewhat auto-biographical, but we’ll see how it turns out.  I will save that for another post.

This post is dedicated to a list that I have always been embarrassed about…my credit card list.  I mentioned a week or two ago that I am going to get help from my parents to consolidate my debt.  Sure, it is a deus ex machina, but nonetheless, it is a way to get my debt under control and it does not involve having to use some sort of debt consolidation.  For those of you who don’t know, a deus ex machina is “a plot device in which a person or thing appears ‘out of the blue’ to help a character to overcome a seemingly insolvable difficulty.”  It was usually the King that came to save the day.  The example of a deus ex machina that sticks out in my mind is that from Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” which I read back in college.

Well, as part of the “healing” or my way of going “debt gangsta” as I called it months ago, I want to list out my credit cards.  My goal is to hit zero balances on all of them and switch to either a totally cash based system or one where I pay each card in full every month.  I used to rely on rewards, but now, I don’t really care about the extra cash, especially since many of the cards are trimming their perks.

Here it is:

1. Discover
2. Discover Miles (I believe they closed this due to inactivity)
3. Citi Professional (ZERO BALANCE)
   
4. Citi Platinum Select
5. American Express Blue
6. American Express Blue for Business (ZERO BALANCE)
   
7. American Express Platinum for Business OPEN (CLOSED)
8. American Express Platinum for Business (ZERO BALANCE)
   
9. American Express Starwood for Business
   
10. U.S. Airways (Bank of America, but going to Barclay’s) (ZERO BALANCE)
    
11. Bank of America Credit Card
    
12. Capital One Miles
    
13. Capital One Miles (Family card)
14. Brooks Brothers Platinum (ZERO BALANCE)
    
15. Chase Platinum
16. Chase Freedom
17. Chase (Circuit City, but becoming Best Buy)
18. Sleepy’s

Wow, that is a lot of credit cards.  It feels good to get that off of my chest.  I am going to keep annotating the list to reflect the ones that I get to zero.  I guess I should set up some automatic transactions to keep my older accounts open, but right now, while I care about my credit report, I care more about my financial health and I would rather get all of those numbers to zero.

- broke

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