I truly hate the “a little here, a little there” approach to paying off debt. Sure, I know it works, but I hate doing it, it’s a pain. I’ll do it anyway now becuase I know it’s the right thing to do.

Also, this week is midwinter break for our oldest daughter, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to instill some financial virtues in her. This morning we put on some loud music and sorted out the “penny bucket” which had about four pounds of coins of various nations. We sorted all the US money into coin rolls and such, and then dropped it off at the bank, $33. Not too shabby.

I’ll “snowflake” this to the last credit card. I’m ambitious now. I’ve seriously caught myself looking around the house to decide what I could sell to unload that one LAST debt and be free of my plastic chains.

Last week our oldest daughter came home and sat down on the sofa by where I was writing and said “Mom–today I learned about interest. Did you know there are good kinds of interest and bad kinds of interest?”

Wow. Those kinds of teaching opportunities don’t come along every day do they? It was the same time that the tax refund came and I was just about to pay off two credit cards entirely.

I sat her down and opened our Mint.com dashboard. I showed her our “good” interest, such as my Lending Club investments, which are earning about 11%). I also showed her our “bad” interest, and how we were going to pay off two of our three credit cards and put them through the shredder.

I encouraged her to save for her future. Tomorrow we’re opening “Smarty Pig” savings accounts together. Come back soon to see how that went.