A bit of sad news came my way this week. I can only pray for peace of mind to all involved. More than anything, it made me long for something that has been long overdue: going home. Yep, I’ve started my travel fund in ING Direct and I should have at least $500 before the year is out in there. That will be my goal. Things have been a little slow on the personal finance front. I had to dip into our emergency fund to make up for the slew of purchases on our credit card. I also finally broke down and signed us up for the ING Electric Orange card which is not a credit card, but it’s like a glorified checking account that has the MasterCard Logo. 🙂 It ties into our emergency account and I’m gradually getting into the hang of using that versus using the credit card on which we are getting charged. It’s a case of incurring interest in one case and not incurring interest in the other. Of course, there’s the potential to abuse this, but I’m keeping close tabs on it. Despite the heavy purchases that went on in August, we’re still on track to clear the credit card by the end of this year or at most, the beginning of next year. Something that did surprise me as that ING Direct pinged my credit report because I opened the Electric Orange savings account. Opening the HP card account also resulted in a hard inquiry on my credit report, but to my surprise, I was still in the 700 region! My suspicion is the number will go higher as I keep making payments on the card. I had planned a really aggressive payoff strategy that would span 3 months in order to take advantage of the 90-day no interest grace period. Well, my plans had a slight hiccup, but I anticipate that with careful planning, I’ll be able to pay off the card in 90 days so I don’t get hammered with interest fees. 🙂