Then earlier this year, Hulu and Disney merged. I was then paying $29 a month for Hulu. Dom insisted on getting Disney which he remembers getting a promotion price of $5.99. He now is paying $16 a month for Disney. We've been wanting to cancel both services for a while and then merging it into one service since now Hulu/Disney has a bundle that is starting around $16. I just realized that I was paying the $29 yesterday. One thing about automatic payments is that it's in a "set it and forget it" mode. So I wasn't really thinking about until I was recently reviewing my credit card statement. I then looked historically at my statements and saw how Hulu creeped from $20 in 2018 (the earliest I started paying for it on that card) to the $29 I'm paying now. I do remember paying $14 when I first had it but have no receipts to prove that other than my faulty memory.
Sally has been nice enough to add me to her Max streaming account which gave me the chance to catch up on Sex & The City, Lovecraft Country, Insecure, Gilded Age, and Big Bang Theory (well Dom forced me to watch that one and it grew on me...LOL). But in recent days Spectrum TV which is apparently a Cable Provider made changes where it's now forcing me to provide a "cable provider" before I can watch anything on Max. Basically I can still see all the Max selections but if I want to watch anything I'll have to connect it to a "cable provider".
Dom has been wanting me to get away from mooching it off Sally. I didn't mind since I've helped Sally a lot financially myself over the years. But apparently there's a new bundle with Hulu/Disney/Max that is the same $16 a month as their Hulu/Disney bundle. So it probably is time for me to cut the Sally Max cord (LOL).
My only question is when will Hulu/Disney/Max start creeping the fees on that one. I'm sure they'll also start putting ADs during programming as well. Not to mention they may pull an Amazon Prime and offer buy/rent options to watch certain shows. But it seems getting this newest bundle may be the temporary fix to increasing streaming costs that we would need. So I finally cancelled both Hulu and Disney on 08/17. Our last day for Hulu is 08/28 and Disney's last day is 09/16 since Dom just paid the monthly Disney fee. The plan is to sign under the new Hulu/Disney/Max bundle on 09/28.
Since I was looking at my historical credit card statements, I was curious to review them to see how much in interest fees I've been paying over the years. I was only able to track them on one of my cards. It was sobering to see how the interest fees stacked up. As much as I bitched over the years with the fees we had to pay whenever Dom overdrawn on our joint account, those didn't come close to the amount of money I've paid in credit card interest fees since I was unable to pay my balance in full.
Things started getting dire in 2017. I was close to getting my cards paid off but then a couple unplanned expenses and later my job being cut led me down the road to interest fee hell.
For my primary credit card I was able to track back to 2017, my highest balance was $30,193.54 in November 2021. My secondary card I believe my highest was somewhere around $15,000. So I had over $45K in credit card debt I was dealing with.
For my primary card, my interest fees by year were as followed:
2017 - $ 856.17
2018 - $1244.08
2019 - $1681.36
2020 - $3191.88
2021 - $4327.64
2022 - $3066.47
2023 - $ 712.38
2024 - $ 0.00
Total interest fees: $15,079.98
Can you believe my total interest fees being paid over the last seven years exceeded my max credit card balance of my secondary card. For the secondary card I will guess based on my total fees on the primary that my total interest there was between $6,000 and $7,000. So over $22,000 in interest fees estimated for both of my cards. I did pay off the secondary card completely in June 2022 so I stopped paying interest there starting in July 2022.
I had my temporary contract job from 03/2018 - 09/2018 which helped slow the interest fee increase a little bit but I still was carrying a $10K-ish credit card balance on my primary. Then I was unemployed for a bit until I took my low-paying Amazon Warehouse job in May 2019. You can see too that my interest fees paid more than doubled between 2019 and 2020. That was because I was unable to put any dent on my credit cards but yet I still had things that I needed to purchase. I would pay the minimum amount and maybe scrape an extra hundred (until it got that I could only pay the minimum) only to have the interest fees and purchases for that month eat it up. So effectively it was like I wasn't paying anything.
Things of course started turning around in December 2021 when I decided to take $90,000 out of my 401-K. I was blessed in that I didn't have to dip into my 401-K prior to that. I remember Sally pretty much depleting her 401-K when she lost her job in 2007. Thankfully I still have a good amount of my 401-K in-tact (recent stock price fluctuations aside). Out of the $90,000, I had to pay close to $40,000 in penalty fees for early withdrawal and taxes.
Financial advisors keep saying not to touch your 401-K due to the penalties and taxes. But I was glad I did it. It gave me the boost I needed to eventually knock out my credit debt and avoid the interest fees I've been giving to the credit card companies.
I was hopeful that I would find a better paying job in 2022 so it made sense for me to do the 401-K withdrawal in Dec 2021 so it would count as 2021 income and not 2022 income. I was blessed that I didn't have to wait too long in 2022 until I was blessed with my present job. And that's where I started the road to getting both of my credit cards paid off.
Originally I had planned to use most of the remaining $50K to knock out both cards. But since I got the job quicker than expected, I just used about half of the $50k to pay down my cards and then put the rest into a low-interest savings account. I decided to just pay $3000 extra every month from my salary.
My interest fees in 2023 went below what I paid in 2017. It feels so good seeing in print now the $0 in interest fees I paid in 2024. The credit card companies got enough money out of me over the years. I'm hoping I can still be able to pay off my monthly credit card bills to avoid paying any fees. I try to keep my credit card balance under $3000. This month unfortunately it looks like I'll be $200 over. I had a couple unplanned expenses including one for a $623 plane ticket to San Francisco for a work conference I'll be participating in. Thankfully I will be getting reimbursed for that one. But I have enough savings to pay off my credit card balance this month.
It is interesting seeing my credit card history. It's sobering seeing how much in interest I paid but at the same time it makes me happy to see how far I've come. It reminds me that even if sometimes it seems my road to financial independence is a slow one, I am making a dent and bringing myself closer to that eventuality.
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