I paid off my Kohl's card

I did it! I paid off my Kohl's card! It was super stressful. It's so easy to justify that monthly payment. It's easy, doesn't require much effort and really, it's not a lot of money. It would have been very easy to continue making that payment forever. It was much harder to give them $1700 all at once.

Also, department store credit cards are the absolute worst. The interest rate on that was so high that most of my payment just went to interest. I used a repayment calculator to determine my payoff. If I would have made minimum payments it would have take 36 months and I would have paid $855 in interest. If I paid $100 a month, which is what I've been doing, it would have taken 22 months and I would have paid $461 in interest.

I paced the house for about an hour before I was able to push the button to pay off that debt. All the worst case scenarios ran through my head. What if I lost my job? What if I got sick- I just started a new job so I won't have health insurance for two months. What if my car breaks down? A million what if's went through my head.

Ultimately, I knew I needed to get rid of this debt. Eventually I would like to buy a small house in an area with a lower cost of living. In order to do that, I need to improve my credit score. Going from 77% credit utilization ( amount of debt in relation to total credit limit) to 66%, is not a huge leap, but it's a start. Hopefully I'll see a few point increase on my credit score.

Also, every $100 I can remove from my monthly living expenses reduces what I need to have saved for retirement. It's a small win, but at the same time, it's a huge win!

I've never paid off a credit card before. That lovely American dream said Charge It! And I did, over and over again. I'm excited to finally be taking steps towards a debt free life.