Snake Debt

[reptileexperts]

Never live beyound your means.

That being said, I use financial software to give me a break down of upcoming expenses, current charges, and current account balances (checkings, savings, etc). I find it better to use Credit cards for everything I purchase - mainly do this because my accounts yield interest on a daily basis, so it's better for the money to be in the account as long as possible, regardless of whether its being spent. As long as I keep track of whats going in and coming out it never hits an issue. $2500 is extremely manageable. If you worry with high interest, this may sound bad, but consider finding a new credit card company that offers a an introduction free balance transfer with a low %APR on the balance transfer. If you do this you can avoid standard interest rates on high %APR credit cards, without having to consider consolidation. I did this a while back after some new photography purchases, just because my other credit card company offered a surprisingly good deal, ended up being a 3% of the total transfer as a fee, and 0% APR for 18 months. I jumped on this because basically it was allowing me to hold onto interest yielding money for greater than a year, which at the time was generating 4% on it's on, thus providing 3% additional interest on money I had spent for the time being. You usually still HAVE to make minimum payments, but it's around $20-26 per $1000 on average. Everyones different though. Again, I used this tactic to boost my interest gains on money already spent, you could use this as a consolidation method for reducing your APR.

But again, like I said, I keep tabs of all my accounts and show the money as taken out as soon as I make a purchase, $150 spinner to a $800 carpet python or a $2000 PVC cage rack wall, it all gets accounted for the same.