It's that time of year to manage my credit balances... and see if I can fund more gear

I'm not totally serious. I'm a pretty smart and intelligent spender.

That said, I still have revolving credit card balances. After some stupid and naïve purchases in college, I spent several years repairing my credit. It was never really that bad, but that cancelled Discover Card haunted me for a few years. All because I bought a Nikon Pronea S for $300 on eBay. Talk about a bad investment.

My first job out of college didn't pay very much and I learned the ups and downs of using credit cards. However, I was good with my payments and my credit score was probably as good as it could have been. Until I was 27 or so, I always seemed to carry a balance of around $2000. That was also around the time when I started photography with the 40D.

Right after I got married in 2010, we carried some debt and it weighed on me tremendously. I wanted to carry no debt and have a clean record moving forward. In about a year's time of careful management, credit card balances down to zero and we paid off the wedding loan. All that was left was law school debt.

Then last year was the big kicker. In 2014, we bought a house. I rolled in debt once again. Credit card bills piled up as we started furnishing the new home.

Anyway, so now I've got 3 credit cards that I transfer balance between at 0% interest. The repayment time between them is long enough that paying the 3-4% transfer fee makes sense. Two of the cards aren't due until mid to late 2016. I have been paying $400 on the other card and the remainder of that balance is due in January. I'm just going to push that over to June of 2017 and then move on to one of the other two cards.

Overall, the transition hasn't been super easy as I still have to do a lot of budgeting. It's taken over a year, but I'm finally at the point where I have staggered the debt enough that I can put some decent change into savings (not counting my retirement savings which I'm contributing aggressively toward anyway). I'm not really planning on buying any new photo gear at the moment. If I sell a couple of things off, sure. If I see a great deal, maybe.

Yours is a good case in point on how credit card spending can get out of control.

Perhaps. I tend to think that if it's long term and has real impact on other needs, then yeah. I'm still saving for retirement and making all other bills. It was during a 1 year period when the charges occurred. Not much different than if I had taken out a decent size personal loan for that year. Right now, it's about management and paying off the debt. My credit score is right around 800 (one score is above and two others just a few points below). I could choose to use next year's bonus to pay it all off, but would rather keep the money liquid instead since the debt is 0%.