My $40,000 Mistake I was young, I thought I had things figured and had all the answers. But I didn’t know how big of a mistake I was making when I decided to pull money out of my IRA to pay off my credit card debt. I didn’t want to pay the 18% interest and so taking out the money that was earning 7% in my retirement account seemed to be a no brainer—heck I was saving 18% in interest. I also had to pay a penalty, but the credit card interest was high enough that the penalty di

Here we are in Barcelona, sitting in our hotel room, just before heading out to dinner when I got an email that our balance transfer to consolidate $10,000 in credit card debt was going to be delayed, which would result in us having to pay $1200 in delayed interest payment. We were on day 6 of a 10-day trip through Spain, and this email could have ruined a wonderful vacation. Instead of enjoying the sites and heading to dinner like we had planned, I had to call the credit ca