Cleared
As of this morning, my credit cards are paid off.
The past week of the process has been exasperating. Dad deposited a bank draft into my account last Tuesday. The bank immediately placed a hold on the funds.
Thursday morning I took a copy of the receipt to my CIBC branch, pointed out the nature of the deposit, and asked whether it would be possible to expedite clearing the funds. The bank guy talked to a manager, came back and apoliogized profusely. Since it was a bank draft, a hold should not have been placed. He promised to make a few calls to try to clear it and contact me later the same day.
I never heard from him again. I could not afford to take any more time off work, so I decided to wait it out. I believe the normal period of time for a hold is three business days, but yesterday the situation still had not changed.
This morning the funds had cleared, presumably at midnight. A whole week? If it were a simple matter to switch banks, I would.
So I paid off Visa this morning (the other card had already been paid from the $1,000 the bank cleared immediately). I've lived under the cloud of unmanageable debt for so long, this should have been a relief, but I felt nothing. I guess the big relief came a few weeks ago, when I worked out these plans.
The reality is, whenever I'm tempted to celebrate in style the way I used to (a nice dinner, a bottle of wine or a couple movie DVDs), which might be exciting at the moment but lead me back down that slippery slope, I must switch off the voice of self-sabotage and go do something else.