Well the credit card arbitrage process has been slowed considerably. I got my first statement and was ready to get my $50 Target gift card, only to find I was 350 points away about. & the only way I can see to get 350 points is to spend $350. Easy enough on one hand, but most of the stuff I pay is already set up automatically and I doubt I will spend $350 in gas and such for the next month.

But I did need to fill up so I dug out the card and spent $50 on gas today. I did need to pay the diaper service and was getting pretty late so I just paid 2 months - $106. I then signed up for our next community center classes at $50. & suddenly I am $200 closer to my goal. On a regular month I could spend another $150 easy, but I don't want to take the card on our cruise. Of course it wouldn't be the worst idea to run all of our cruise expenses on dh's card, just easy to keep it all separate. Hmmmm. An idea as I am sure he will run up against the same thing. I guess I will have to check when his card closes for the month. Will probably have to wait another cycle regardless, for the whole balance transfer thing. But that way he can put all the groceries and his gas on the rewards card - for the 3%, if he run up his card with the cruise stuff. Win-win!

I signed up for karate & swimnming. I only show up to aerobics 1/2 the time, so I still have a good month left. & we decided to drop toddler class for a while. I can't get off work during the day - it is just too much. So BM gets swimming, preschool, and karate and LM gets nothing. Then again every toddler class, about 15 minutes into it, LM tells me he is ready to go home anyway. HE seems to enjoy it enough, but 15 minutes is his limit I guess. So we are dropping it for now, maybe indefinitely. We just got to get him out of diapers and maybe we could afford to drop him off at preschool once in a while, which he would much prefer. Just LOVED getting to stay there last night.

Well for June/July I Expect to get a $250 rebate from Chase, as well as $100 in gift cards from Citibank. What a nice windfall. & then around $90 the first month of arbitrage. It will go down considerably every month as the new rule is the minimum payment is 4% of the balance or something - they just upped it which works against us. Oh well. I still expect to make in the realm of $500 - $1k, so no complaints overall.

Interestingly I got another 0%, no fee, balance transfer offer from Chase. I think I have a chance of a higher limit with them because we have had our card quite a few months by now. But all the same I decided those up front offers are no good because lord knows how much they will really give you.

Oh, but back to my card, waiting one month isn't the worst. They denied a credit increase online, but with my credit score I expect to be able to up it if I call in person. Only exception if they freak out about all the credit I just applied for I guess. Well, we'll see. It's worth a try, but $20k is a good start, where we are at for now.

& how weird will it be to say, "I have $20k in credit card debt." I can imagine just saying it out loud to freak out friends and family. They would seriously think we lost our mine because we are so anti-debt for the most part anyway.