Equifax and Groupon

I finally checked my credit score (via Equifax) after a couple years of completely avoiding Equifax.
A couple years ago, when the debt continued to grow I was very afraid of what my credit score was.  Although it recommended to check your credit report annually, I just didn't want to know.

Well this morning I finally checked my credit score.  Being the impatient person that I am, I purchased my Equifax credit report online for $24.95.  This does go against my No/Low spending challenge, but if I didn't do it, I most likely would have continued to avoid it.

It wasn't the best feeling to spend $25 on my credit report but it was a good feeling to finally know what my credit score is.  And I'm happy (and relieved) to say that my credit is in good standing.  There's definitely room for improvement, so this has given me some motivation to stay focused and a boost of confidence that our finances/debt are moving in the right direction.  I'm not sure how I would have felt if the credit report returned a less than good credit score.  If that had happened I suspect I would have been very tempted to spend money, with the thought that my credit score wasn't good anyway.

On a completely different topic, last night I logged into my Groupon account and realized that I had a Groupon for Mixbook.com to purchase a photobook.  The Groupon is expiring next month so I decided to go ahead and start putting the photo book together.  I went through the process of uploading photos and placing them on the 35 photo book pages.  When I went through the Checkout process and applied the Groupon number I had, I realized that there was still an amount of $19.98.  I took a look at the transaction details and saw that the $19.98 was the charge for Shipping & Handling.  I immediately double-checked the actual Groupon, and there it was... in the fine print "Shipping & Handling not included"  DOH!

The original Groupon was $19 for $50 worth of product at Mixbook, and with the photo books I ordered I was able to use up the entire $50 amount, so my total cost would be $19 (Groupon) + $20 shipping & handling.  One thought that came to mind was that I would just let the Groupon expired and not use it which would mean wasting $19.  Then a part of me knew that in the near future, I would need to order photo books anyway (I order T and J photo books each year), so this was a good opportunity to save some $$$.

So after debating the situation, I placed the order this morning.  So this morning I have now spent $45 on the Equifax credit report and the shipping costs for the photo books.  Not the greatest start but the credit card charges will be paid tomorrow in addition to our regular monthly payment so the good news is that there's $$ in the budget for these expenses, and the balance will not sit on a credit card accumulating interest.