Day 34:Restructure?

I've been looking the past couple of days and I may need to change our debt payoff strategy. I was adding up our bills, all of our bills, and realizing that we just don't have enough money to go around. There are probably things we could cut, like cable (currently runs us $163.25 per month) and if my husband would ever quit smoking, it would save us over $300 a month. We can't change our phone plan because we just signed a new two year contract; besides, three iPhones on an unlimited data plan and two regular phones without a data plan is actually a pretty good deal at $210 a month. It would cost more to break the contract than we'd save in fees. We've been trying to grocery shop more often to spend less in one trip and throw away less perishable goods, but it's hard for me to shop for one week, or two weeks, when I'm used to shopping for three or four. I also signed up for our electric companies budget plan so our bill remains pretty stable. So far, it's only fluctuated $2-$3 per month, and we're accruing a credit to apply towards our winter heating bill this year. It's easier to be on the payment plan than pay $125 during the summer and $300 during the winter.

I was also considering moving payments around. Currently I'm paying $200 on one Best Buy card and $225 on the other. These values were based on what it's going to cost to pay off "No interest" purchases by the maturity date. The thing is, I didn't take into account that these purchases expire at different times, and HSBC applies payments first to the minimum payment due on each individual purchase, then any purchase that isn't on a payment plan, and then on the no interest payment that expires first, so even though our largest purchase expires in December 2011 and accounts for 34% of my estimated payment, 100% of that payment is going towards our smallest purchase. I think it will make more sense to include a picture of what I mean.

The above chart is a representation of our current purchases on our Best Buy cards. The items highlighted in the red color are on one card, the one we're currently paying $225 on. The items highlighted in purple are on another card, the one we currently pay $200 on. I've been considering paying less on the Best Buy cards, once I have the item expiring in December paid off, and applying the extra payments to our Target credit card, which has the earliest balance. By playing with a debt snowball calculator, it appears that going this route would not only pay off all three cards earlier, but save us over $800 in interest. My only concern is that if we don't get our tax return on time, we'll end up paying interest on the purchase that expires in March.

None of this matters though, if we can't stop using our credit cards and eliminate something somewhere. We're struggling with this right now, because we're just having a hard time sticking to our budget over the weekends, which means we end up having to use credit cards to cover a necessity, or we're short on mortgage. I wish I could point to one thing that's contributing to our downfall, but it's all of us. This past weekend we ate out four times, easy $100. This coming weekend is our anniversary and between dinner and a movie, we're looking at another $100. I know we'll get there, just right now we're struggling.