Pain in the Pump

With gas prices soaring, everyone is feeling the pain of high fuel costs. Because we are spending more on gas than we were before, I need to rework our budget. This is something that brings no joy in my life. Wether I like it or not we are spending more at the pump, so I need to allocate more money for fuel than I had in past months. Another thing we need to look at is our electric bill, which has jacked up over these summer days. This means less spendable cash at hand. So I will start working on a new budget and let you guys know how it came out later.

Back in Black

Well I am finally back. I've been slacking enough and it is time to get back to work. Here is what's been going on. After the drama of our car breaking down all the time, we got a new truck. Besides the car payment, the truck is working out awesomely. My investments are sucking, but I have the time to wait it out. Everything else is pretty much cool. So here is my first post for the new year. Sorry it took so long for me to post something.

Slacking

I know I've been slacking on my post and I am sorry. So to let you know where I am at, we had to trade in the vehicle that we've been having trouble with, we were putting more money into it than it was worth. So we have a new truck. It is nice, but I am not looking forward to having a car payment. Oh well, I don't have to worry about it breaking down. I will start posting more, I've just been lazy.

Carnival of Personal Finance #123

The carnival of personal finance is up on Dough Roller's blog. Just wanted to say thanks to Dough Roller for including my article on life insurance. As always check out the blog there are a lot of great entries. I will post some of my favorites once I get a chance to read them.

More Drama

So since having work done one both cars, one of the cars has decided to continue to have problems. I guess it's because it is an '98 and has never given us problems until now. Oh well I guess that is life. If it's not one thing it's another. Well hopefully we have everything fixed now that needed to be fixed and the car will last us a little longer. The car is paid of and I really don't want to get into another car payment, but it looks like if it is going to cost us more to maintain it may be better to get rid of it and get something new. The bad thing is, is that I am attached to the car and don't want to get rid of it. So I guess we will see how it runs for a while. Hopefully we can keep it, since I am kind of attached to it.

Emergency Fund Works

Turns out we had to have all kinds of work done on both our cars this month. It was unexpected and we were short on cash also. So our emergency fund came to the rescue. It sure beat busting out the credit cards again. So anyway we got most of the work done and only have a couple of minor things to take care of. Start an emergency fund it works.

Life Insurance, How Much is Enough?

Life Insurance may be taboo to talk about because no one wants to talk about their mortality, but Life Insurance is something everyone definitely needs. Well how much do you need? Money Magazine says that you need to multiply your income by five to come up with the amount that you need. Much of the question is how much will your family need to survive if you pass away. Then there is the question of whether to get a term life policy or a whole life policy. A term life policy is good for the amount of years you purchase it for 10yrs, 15yrs, etc.... A whole life policy is more like an investment, you are investing a premium into your policy and if at a certain age you have not passed away, you can start withdrawing on your money. The younger you are the cheaper it is to get a life policy and you can have a lot invested by the time that you are ready to retire. The best thing to do is get with a good agent and have them go over your many options.

College Tuitions

I just read an awesome article on why college tuition's are so high. I know my tuition puts the hurt on my wallet. Even worse than tuition is the cost of books, and the fact that there are new books every semester, so you are stuck with buying new instead of used books. Click the link on the title to read the original blog entry.

Stocks are on the rise

Hopefully this trend continues so I can either break even or make some money on my stock. I always second guess myself when to get out and end up in the position I am in. Either take the loss or wait forever for the stock to break even. I guess I should read up more on stocks. Anyway enough complaining stocks are up, woo-hoo.

Top 10 Money Drains

Bankrate.com has listed 10 of the daily expenses that eat away at your money on daily expenses.

1) Coffee - for all you coffee addicts out there save your money, make your own coffee.
2) Cigarettes- this pretty much talks for itself, quit smoking save money.
3) Alcohol- Many of us spend way too much on this, cut it out and save muh-lah.
4) Bottled Water- This is one of my addictions, why pay a buck for bottled water.
5) Manicures- Women do your own nails, save money.
6) Car Washes- It's easy to blow $20 or more getting a car wash, wash you own car even at a car wash may cost around $5 in change.
7)Eating Out- Eating out kills your wallet, take a lunch to work and cook at home instead of going out.
8) Vending Machines- As a student it is very easy to waste a couple of bucks on junk food between classes or during breaks.
9) Credit Cards- Need I say any more? This should be number one.
10 Unused memberships- Like gym memberships, if you aren't using them cut them out.

Other places I think you can save money on is cutting out cable or satellite channels. Get the basic coverage if you need it. Let me know if you have any other ideas on how to save money or cut things out.

Classes Starting Again

Well classes are starting again this month. I am taking an Internet class, because I want to be able to spend more time with our baby. The good thing about taking classes is that it saves me money because I am studying most of the time. Anything that saves money is a good thing. So I am definitely looking forward to going back to class. I will probably be able to cut down some of the satellite channels and some other stuff, I won't have time to watch or do. This should help save even more.

Stocks Rising

Looks like stocks are rising, which is good because I almost made a major boo-boo by getting out at the bottom and cutting my losses. Hopefully this trend lasts. I guess I will just have to be patient and see what happens. I need to get back to reading more on stocks and the forex market. I've been slacking and that's what got me in trouble to begin with. If anyone has any recommends on either subject, I would greatly appreciate any input.

Investing Problems

So my investments aren't doing so hot. I didn't get out when I should have and my stocks dropped big time. Now I'm stuck either waiting for them to go back up or getting out at the bottom and trying again. So basically I get the shaft both ways. I think I will wait it out and see that it hopefully gets back up to where I was at. Now you know why I am an amateur investor. Oh well, each mistake is a learning experience.

Carnival of Personal Finance #108

The 108th Carnival of Personal Finance is being held by Broke-Ass Student this week. Just wanted to say thanks for the great job and for including my article on Spending Too Much on Your Kids. There are a lot of awesome posts so check them out. I will post some of my favorites once I get a chance to read some of them.

Happy July 4th

Hope everyone had a happy 4th of July. We did, we spent time with friends and family, so we had a great time. Hopefully no on lost any digits playing with fireworks. Again Happy late 4th of July!

Spending Too Much on Your Kids

MSN has a good article that talks about how parents are spending too much money on their kids and not putting money away for retirement. Being a new parent I can see how this happens. There are so many things out there for kids and you want your kids to have the world, but how much is too much? We are lucky enough to be a two income family, but I can still see how we could overspend on our new baby. This is why we are trying to work up a budget that still lets us put money away for retirement and for our emergency savings account. The article talks about some of the reasons people are getting in debt for their children; paying for private schools, buying bigger homes, trying to keep up with the Jones' kids, and not teaching your kids the value of money. I think this is the most important of all and plan on teaching our kid when she is old enough the value of money and savings. This way she won't be in the same boat my wife and I are in. Anyway the article is pretty good, check it out.

I really hate budgets

I really hate budgets for some reason. One we never meet them or we just blow them off and two they are just a pain in the butt. I know I need to work on one to track our spending better, but I just dread taking the time to go through everything. Anyone have any ideas or comments. I'd like an easy budget and something that we would be able to not only keep up with, but would be willing to continue using.

Where We Are With Our Goals

Here is an update on where we are with our goals and with our debt.

1) Get out of debt. We are still working on this one, but at least we have consolidated all of our credit cards.
2) We are investing for retirement.
3) I am continuing my education college and investing.
4) We've had a baby.
5) We've remodeled our kitchen.

Our five year goals are still to get out of debt, buy a new house, rent or sell the current one, fix up our yard, get fit & lose weight. So we are halfway there and it has only been a year. I guess it's time to rethink or redo our five year plan, so we can stay on track of things.

Motivation and Goal Setting

I was looking over some notes that I have and found this and thought that it would make a good post again. I don't remember what book I got it from or which seminar I heard it from, but I give props out to whoever came up with it.

1) Examine your identity.
2) Define your Values.
3) Establish goals and create sub goals.
4) Create and action plan.
5) Implement various motivations.
6) Establish Discipline.
7) Maintain Flexibility.
8) Reach an outcome.

I feel that it is good to get refocused on your goals so that you stay on track. This is one way to keep on track or to actually get on track. If I remember where I got this from I will list the author so that you can check it out.

Old Habits

It seems that we have gone back to our old habit of eating out a lot, which is eating up a lot of our income. We had been doing pretty well with buying groceries and cooking at home, but it all starts to become a pain in the butt. Besides junk food is so much easier to get and jacks up your fat intake and your body weight. Anyway it looks like we are going to have to get strict with ourselves and start making meals at home again. Back to the fun of home cooking.

Bad Blogger

So I have been a bad blogger lately. Part of it is the new baby, but most of it is running out of things to talk about. Now that things are getting back to normal, I will start blogging more. I've got a couple of books that I want to do reviews on and talk about the evils of credit cards again. Speaking of credit cards, have you noticed that when you stop using them, credit card companies start sending you new cards, checks to use on your credit card, and about anything else they can throw your way to get you to get yourself back in debt. Well their Jedi mind tricks won't work on me. Just say no to credit card debt. Anyway I will get back to my usual posting habits.

A.I.

Ready For A Bigger House

Now that we have a new addition to our family, it looks like our house has shrunk a little more. I am ready for a bigger house already, but we need to wait on paying off the loan we took out to pay off our credit cards. So it looks like we will be stuck in a small house for a while longer. We should be able to manage, we might just have to get creative with the space that we currently have. Anyway just wanted to rant a little about our tiny house.

It's a Girl

Just wanted to let everyone know that we had our baby. She's a beautiful little girl. I should be posting more again now as things start getting back to normal. Sorry it's been a while since I've had a post. I will get back on the ball.

:)

Our Emergency Fund Is Coming Along

Since we have been using HSBCdirect to grow our emergency fund, our account has been growing slowly but surely. I've also been very happy with their service, seeing that I locked myself out of my account a couple of times and was always able to reach someone from customer service to help me out. We have enough in right now to cover a small emergency, but I would like to save enough to where if something came up, we wouldn't have to go back to charging on our credit cards. So knock on wood that nothing comes up. Anyway I am very happy with the service that we have been getting from HSBC and would recommend them to anyone looking for an online savings account.

Eating Out Less

Last month we noticed that we had been going out to eat too much and spending way to much on restaurants. So we decided to see what would happen if we cut out eating out and spent more time making meals at home. Well we have spent about $300 a month on groceries, but we have saved a ton of money by just eating at home. We have still gone out a couple of times, but not as much as we were before. Hopefully we can keep up with this trend because we need to be saving as much money as we can for when the baby comes. Which means we will be spending a lot of time at home and with family for a while. I am new to fatherhood so I am not sure about how soon you take your baby out and all that stuff, so it should be an interesting experience.

1st Payment on Loan

Today was our first payment on the loan that we got to consolidate all of our credit card debt. It felt really good just to be making one lump payment and not a bunch of small ones. The other good thing is that we can actually see the light at the other end of the tunnel. Unlike when we were just paying on the credit cards, we actually know that we will have everything paid off in 4 years. So I am pretty excited about that. I have also been slacking on my blogging duties, part of it is writer's block, and maybe a little bit of laziness. I will get back on track and try to start posting more often.

Cold Turkey, Cutting Our Spending

In an attept to cut our spending and save some extra cash, we took a look at our budget and bank statements and realized that we were going out to eat way too much. So this past month we hit up the grocery store and have been eating and spending more time at home. Turns out our budget looks a little better this month and our dollars are stretching a little more than they have the past couple of months. We still went out to eat once or twice, but nothing like we had before. I guess you don't actually know how much you are spending on junk or wasting money until you actually sit down and look at it. This month may actually turn out to be a good one after all.

Our Love with Debt

I just read an awesome article on debt called, "Deep In Debt, Deeper In Denial" by Laura Rowley. It talks about a documentary that is coming out called "Maxed Out", my life story. Anyway it talks about how bad Americans are in debt and how much creditors and collection agencies are loving it. Pretty sick if you ask me, especially since I am in debt. I am looking forward to checking out this documentary. Definitely read the article, it has a lot of great information.

Budget Time Again

Well now that we got the loan to pay off all of our credit card debt, it's time to do our budget again to make sure that we have everything paid on time and aren't broke most of the month. I was paying all of our bills at the beginning of the month, but now I'm going to have to split it between the 1st and the 15th. I hate budgeting, but it has to be done. I am glad that we have all of our credit card bills consolidated now and only have to make one payment instead of many. I am also trying to put some money away for when the baby comes, just in case we have any extra costs. Hopefully the budget works out with out too many hassles.

Get Rid of the Clutter

Well slowly, but surely, I have been reading Suze Orman's "The Courage to be Rich". I've come across an interesting part about getting rid of the clutter in your life and getting yourself organized. This not only shows you that you have too much junk in your house, but also the amount of money that you have wasted on things that you don't really need. We have a ton of stuff we can get rid of, especially since we are losing a room to the baby. It doesn't help that my wife is a pack rat and has kept everything she owns since the dawn of time. So now it is time for us to get organized and unfortunately move some stuff into storage. The amount we are paying for storage could be going to better things, like savings or investments, but when you live in a super small house we don't have much choice. So hopefully soon we will have all of the stuff in our house either organized or stored, so we can start saving more money by not buying more junk. Anyway I thought this was pretty interesting from Suze, especially since it applies to me. Will keep you informed on anything else I find interesting in her book.

Tags: book reviews

V-Day Is Almost Here

Well Valentine's Day is almost here. We have decided to go the cheap route because of our impending new arrival. A couple of cards, some small gifts, and a home cooked meal. Maybe even starting to paint the babies room pink. Nothing says romance like painting a room pink & lavender. I guess our priorities are starting to change, which is good. We need to start focusing on our baby anyway. Anyway just wanted to say that I hope everyone has a happy and enjoyable Valentine's Day.

Slacking Again

Okay so I've been slacking on my blog lately. My reasons? I've been down with the flu and I've been spending a lot of time working on the babies room. It seems that changing out the base boards on an old house is a lot more work than I had bargained for. So because of these reasons I haven't blogged in a while, sorry. Will get back on the ball as soon as I start feeling better.

Good News

Well we got good news, we got the loan to pay off all of our evil credit cards. Now all that is left to do is to put them to their death; by shredder with no blind fold and no last requests. Even though it seems far away it feels good to know that we will have everything payed off in four years or less and as soon as that is over with I'm sure it will be time to start looking for a larger house for us and our new addition. So the fight against debt continues, hopefully at a better pace. Will keep everyone posted.

Tags: Debt Reduction, Credit, Credit Cards

Paying Off Our Credit Card Debt

Well we are continuing to work on our credit card debt. I put in for a consolidation loan at one of our local Federal Credit Unions, so it looks like we may be able to cut down the amount of time it is going to take to pay off our debt from forever to around 4 yrs if we can get the loan and a pretty decent interest rate. So far things are looking pretty good and I would rather have one payment than a whole bunch of small and large payments. I hate credit cards. If I have learned anything from all this is that credit cards are evil. We are also continuing to put money aside into our emergency fund, so that anything that comes up unexpectedly will be paid with cash. So everyone cross your fingers, and hope that this loan goes through.

Carnivals this week

Just wanted to thank Blueprint for Financial Prosperity for including my article on Being Mature About Debt in this weeks Carnival of Personal Finance. Jim's done a great job of hosting even though it seems overwhelming with the shear number of entries. I am looking forward to reading alot of the articles and will post links to some of my favorites.

Being Mature About Debt

I found this article interesting on Yahoo finance called "6 ways to be a grown-up about debt" by George Mannes from Money Magazine. Since I've been down on our credit card debt I was happy to see that I was not the only one in this sinking ship. It seems that since 1990 credit card debt has more than doubled according to CardTrak.com. The reason why? Because it's so easy to charge things and have that "I want it now mentality". So what can you do to save your financial prosperity?

Money Magazine suggests this:

1) Admit that you're the problem. Almost sounds like AA, Hi my name is Mike and I have a credit card addiction. Actually this means taking responsibility for your credit dilemmas. Understand that eating out and using your credit card to pay for it makes for a very expensive meal.
2) Play Tricks on Yourself. Lock up the credit cards, shred them, burn them. Do anything to keep them out of reach and don't use them anymore. Start putting money aside for an emergency fund, so that if something comes up you aren't tempted to bust out a credit card.
Another good idea that they have is that if you need to get something big, pull the money out and put it in envelopes until you have enough for that large purchase.
3) Make success simple. Now that you've put a brake on your credit card debt, come up with a plan to start paying off your cards. Start by paying of the highest interest card and work your way down.
4) Beware of the easy out. Debt consolidation and Home equity loans can keep you in the same trouble if you don't change your spending habits and your mentality on credit card debt. Also with a home equity loan you are risking your home to get out of debt.
5) Get help if needed. Get help from a reputable credit counselor, who may be able to get you some better rates on your credit cards, just don't pay more than $75 and do your research.
6) Think outside the debt. Even though you are in debt don't forget to save some for an emergency and for retirement. Talk your expenses over with your significant other so that the future will look much brighter.

This article made me feel a little better, especially since I just figured out that we owe a ton of money on our credit cards. We didn't get in debt overnight, so I guess we aren't going to get out of debt overnight either.

Forex 101 Pt 2

I've been checking out some of the forex forums online and came across an awesome site for forex newbies, like myself. The site is www.babypips.com and it is full of all types of useful information. One of the things I found very interesting is their subject on what to look for in an online Forex Broker/Dealer. The following comes straight off of their site, so all of the credit is theirs.

What to look for in an online Forex broker/dealer:

1) Low Spreads. In Forex trading the "spread" is the difference between the buy and sell price of any given currency pair. Lower spreads save you money.
2) Low minimum account openings. For those that [are] new to Forex trading and for those that don't have millions of dollars in risk capital to trade, being able to open a micro trading account with only $250 (We recommend at least $1000) is a great feature for new traders.
3) Instant automatic execution of your orders. This is very important when choosing a Forex broker. Don't settle with a firm that re-quotes you when you click on a price or a firm that allows for price "slippage". This is very important when trading for small profits. [...].
4) Free charting and technical analysis. Choose a broker that gives you access to the best charting and technical analysis available to active traders. Look for a broker that provides free professional charting services and allows traders to trade directly on the charts.
5) Leverage. Leverage can either make you super rich or super broke. Most likely, it will be the later. As an inexperienced trader, you don't want too much leverage. A good rule of thumb is to not use more than 100:1 leverage for Standard (100k) accounts and 200:1 for Mini (10k) accounts.

-Babypips.com-

I have been having a hard time figuring out which brokerage sites were better, which were legit and pretty much everything else about forex accounts. If you are as confused as I am please check out their site. They have alot of information an make it easy to understand.

Tags: Forex

Doing the Nasty, Figuring Out Our Credit Card Debt

So since this was one of my New Year's Resolutions, I figured it was time to recalculate our credit card debt. Pretty depressing. We owe around $25,000 in credit card bills and around $6,000 in a home remodeling loan. Someone shoot me if we ever pick up a credit card again. Actually most of the stuff was for our wedding, and stuff for our first house, so I shouldn't feel too bad, but if I had it to do over again I sure would do it a different way. Well enough wining it's time to come up with a plan to knock out our debt. I've heard of a lot of different ideas, but I think we are going to go with paying more on our highest interest credit card and working our way down. The only thing that worries me is that having an addition to our family may make this hard, so I am going to have to look at some alternate ways of picking up some income. I already have an simple IRA through work that matches my deposits, and have a Roth IRA to work on our retirement, so I am thinking about starting a Forex account to hopefully get some extra money going to pay off some bills. I really don't want to get a part time job or anything like that, so I better get a move on learning about the Forex Market. As of right now I am reading "Forex Made Easy: 6 Ways to Trade the Dollar" by James Dicks, but I was left a comment by Jon that says I should also check out a book called Forex Evolution so I will try to search for this book also. Thanks for the info Jon. Any other books or suggestions on forex would be appreciated.

Tags: Debt Reduction, forex, Credit

To Hedge or Not to Hedge?

As an Amateur Investor, I am not ashamed to say that I do not or did not have a clue to what hedging was. I usually see or read about investors hedging, but never really got the gist of what they are talking about or what they really meant about hedging. I have been reading a new book called "Forex Made Easy: 6 Ways To Trade The Dollar" by James Dicks. As anyone who has read this blog before knows I really want to get into forex trading. I've just started reading this book and found it interesting that the author talks about four mistakes investors make:

1) Trading against the trend- I've made this mistake, luckily I just had to wait it out and was able to make my gains back, but if I would have cut my losses and got back in at the bottom I would have done a lot better.

2) Don't listen to so called experts, they all have there own agenda. (So if I took his advice I shouldn't be reading his book) This part I get because most of the experts on TV, stockbrokers, etc... are pretty much looking out for there best interest. This is why I like to read blogs, I can usually find a lot of great information out there.

3) Unwillingness to sell. I guess this would be the Enron syndrome, where the boat is sinking and no one is getting out.

4) Getting emotionally involved. This is how I got into mistake number 1. I kept saying to myself "hey this is a good company they will come back", luckily they did, but what if they would not have. Leave emotions out, if the signs say get out, get out.

Anyway in between explaining the mistakes investors make, the author starts talking about how Forex can be a hedge to your stock market investments. The only problem is that he didn't explain what a hedge was and what I was getting out of it was to hedging was like diversifying, but it turns out that they are totally different things. Wikipedia says that a hedge is an investment that is taken out specifically to reduce the risk in another investment. So I guess what the author is saying about Forex is that you can use it to offset some of the risk of your stock market investment and vice versa. Though I still don't totally understand the whole hedging thing, at least I have kind of an idea what it is, If anyone out there can explain it better to me I would greatly appreciate it. Anyway I will keep you up to date on the book and on the more I find out about hedging.

Moving the Computer

Well there goes the computer room. I got everything moved into our bedroom making it smaller that it already was. So if anyone has been wondering about why I haven't been posting in a while, it's cause we are in the process of getting the babies room organized and ready to paint, my blue walls will be changing to pink and some other pastel color. I actually like the move with the computer. Now I can watch TV, jam to tunes, surf the net, and work on my blog all at the same time. How is that for multi-tasking. Anyway wanted to let people know what's up and I will get back to posting more personal finance material as soon as I can.

Tags: goals, resolutions, tasks

Resolution Time

Well the New Year has begun. Hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday. Now it's time to work on those new resolutions. I've already started clearing our my office for the impending arrival of our daughter. I am also going to total out our credit card debt, which should be pretty depressing, so that we can make our plan of attack on how we are going to get these evil pieces of plastic paid off faster. This is probably the one thing that I am not looking forward to. The one good thing that came out of the Holiday's is that this past year we did not use our credit cards once for either Christmas or New Year's, so I am very happy about that. We didn't even go through withdrawals for going cold turkey on our credit cards. Anyway I will be working on our debt numbers and a budget for the year and will keep everyone up to date on our progress. Even though I was feeling like it was going to take forever to pay of, this year I am a little more optimistic. My year has started out well and I hope everyone else's has too.

Happy New Year's Eve and Day

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year's. Hope you all have a great and safe night and day. We plan on spending the holiday with family and shooting off some fireworks, so that should be pretty interesting. Anyway have a great holiday.

New Year's Day is Around The Corner

Well New Year's Day is just around the corner and since I already have my New Year's resolutions listed, I figured I'd start working on some short term goals to keep up with what we have planned and list the order that we are gonna attack things. I know that the first thing that I want to get get working on is what is to be the new babies room, which was/is my computer room. So that means a lot of moving things around and trying to find room to store things. We are in the process of deciding whether or not to get a storage unit or not. Chances are that we will, even though I don't want any extra expenses. Oh well, that's what happens when you live in a tiny house. The good thing about living in a tiny house is that our mortgage payment is cheaper that the last one room apartment I had, so I can't complain too much. Once we get some of credit card debt under control, we can start looking at moving into something bigger, so for now our little house will have to do. Well once we work out a list of things we need to do to meet our goals, I will post it so that I can keep track of them.

Well Christmas is Over

Well Christmas is over and we made it through without going totally broke. This is the first year that we did not use our credit cards for any gifts and we even made a budget of what we would spend on gifts. It actually feels pretty good and we have enough left over to get us to next payday, without having to bust in to into our emergency fund. So not only did we have a happy holiday, we kept our spending under control, which means less credit card debt to pay off. Yeah! I hope everyone else had a happy holiday. I am looking forward to the new year, not just for the food and parties, but also for the chance to get working on the wife's and my new year resolutions and the more we plug away at our debt the sooner we will have it all payed off. Which means we will be on our way to financial freedom.

Happy Holidays everyone and I hope your Christmas was as enjoyable as mine.

Tags: Debt Reduction, Budgets

Merry Christmas

Just wanted to wish everyone out there a Merry Christmas and hope that all of your holiday wishes and dreams come true. I plan on stuffing my face so that I have a reason to work out hard next year. See got my New Year's resolutions already worked out. Anyway, hope your holidays are full of fun and family.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!!!

:)

Tags: Holidays

New Year's Resolution

Well it's getting close to that time of year again. I figured this year I would start a little early so that I am not rushing for ideas at the last minute. For 2007 there are a lot of things that I want to do or do better, especially now that we will be bringing a daughter into the world. My first resolution for the new year is to make sure to have everything prepared for her arrival. This is my most important resolution so I plan on keeping it. Here is a list of my other resolutions.

2) Get out of debt. I plan to continue plugging away at our debt and hope to knock out as much as possible.

3) Continue to grow my emergency fund. This way if anything ever comes up, I will not have to use the credit cards again (They are evil).

4) Continue investing a little at a time. Like our emergency fund both continue to grow, so we plan on keeping them up.

5) Get back in Shape. I've already been working out for the past couple of months and I plan to continue so that I can keep up with our child. It sucks being out of shape.

6) Continue reading and learning as much as I can about money, personal finance, debt reduction & management, investing, forex, and anything else that catches my attention.

7) Continue blogging. Not only does it keep me interested and focused on where I am going, but every once in a while I get one or two good articles in.

8) Budget better and give more to charity.

So this is my tentative New Year's Resolution. What are some of yours?

Tags: personal finance

The Courage to Be Rich

Now that finals are over and I have a little more time on my hands, I've started to read "The Courage to Be Rich" by Suze Orman. I can't exactly say that I am a fan of hers. I saw her show once and can't say that I was too impressed. Maybe her personality just turned me off, but I may have to re-think my opinion because her book seems to be pretty good so far. Just from reading the first couple of pages I find it interesting that she says that the three things that hold us back from getting rich or getting out of debt are shame, fear, and anger. So I decided to pose the question to myself on how I felt about being in debt. I am mad at myself for letting myself get into so much debt. I wish I would have known more about being responsible with my money and credit cards before I got married and I also worry that it will take forever to get out of debt. I don't feel ashamed about my debt, but if I had the chance to do it over again, I would do things differently and stay out of debt. So I guess two out of three isn't bad. I know that from now on I will be alot smarter about using my credit cards and that when my child is old enough, I will teach her the value of money and how to make it work for you, instead of being a slave to debt. So far as the book goes, it seems pretty good. I will probably add some more insight on it as I get further along, and will do a review once I have finished reading it.

New Carnival in Town

Carnival of Thoughtful Consideration #1 is up. I would like to thank Andy for including my article on Some Tips for Holiday Shopping. Andy has done a great job on his first carnival and I love the mixture of personal finance and other assorted articles. Keep up the good work. I will be posting a couple of my favorite articles from the carnival and Congrats again to Andy for a great carnival.

Tags: carnivals

Favorite Articles of the Week

Here are some of my favorite articles for this week. Impact of the Dollar Decline by Mike D. of The Time and Money Group has a very interesting article on why the dollar is declining and what some of the fall out could be. Another good article this week is from Personal Finance Advice "Investment Risk Tolerance: What's Yours". Check it out and take the quizzes to find out what your risk tolerance is. Another great article is by Life Training - Online, "Automate Your Way to Wealth". This is a great article on automating your emergency fund. These are only a couple of the articles I liked from the Carnival of Personal Finance and from the Carnival of Investing. Check them out to see a lot more.

Carnivals for This Week

Carnival of Investing #52 is up at Investor Trip, TJP has done an excellent job this week, definitely check it out. Thanks go out to TJP for including my article on Forex 101. The Carnival of Personal Finance #78 is also up at kirkwalsh.com. Thanks go out to Kirk Walsh for including my article on Giving to Charity the Right Way and for doing a great job with the carnival. As always I will include some links to my favorite articles for this week.

Giving to Charity the Right Way

So if you are planning on giving to charity or are just interested in philanthropy the first step to take is to figure out what charities you would be interested in giving to. Then you want to research these charities like investment companies, and find out where the money is going. You want your money going to a company that is going to make a large impact by using most of your money for the charity it supports, not just for itself. Next would be to decide how much to give and how often. You need to plan out a strategy for how much you can afford to give, and how often, monthly, annually. Whatever you feel comfortable with, most charities are going to be happy with whatever help they can get. Make sure whatever charity you choose is accountable for your money. Like any company, nonprofit charities should be accountable for what they spend on expenses and what amount actually goes to helping your cause. BusinessWeek.com has a good article on Four Steps to Smart Giving and CnnMoney.com has an article on Do The Right Thing, The Right Way. Both of these articles have a lot of good advice on giving to charities. Also check watchdog groups like give.org and charitynavigator.org to find out the standings of your charities. Remember giving is a good thing, but do your homework first.

Tags: philanthropy

New Car or Keep the Old?

Lately I've been thinking about getting rid of my wife's older car and getting something newer with better gas mileage and well just something new. I have a company vehicle that she drives and I drive her old 98 Mustang GT. The problem is that I drive a lot further to get to work, so I've been thinking about getting something a little better on gas and a little more comfortable. The cons to this idea is that the vehicle is still in great shape, has low mileage, and has not caused us a lot of problems. It needs some minor maintenance work, but it will still come out a lot cheaper than buying a new car. I guess as I write this I have made up my mind to keep on with not having a car payment. Why get into more debt, when I can use the extra money to pay off some of our credit card debt. I guess seeing it in writing showed me what a dumb idea it would be to trade in a running, paid off vehicle. Oh well, goodbye new vehicle.

Some Tips For Holiday Shopping

Here are some holiday tips for Christmas shopping. First make a list of all of the people that you are shopping for. Next come up with a budget that you are willing to spend on each person. This will keep you from splurging and going crazy shopping. Some other tips would be to shop online. It is easy to compare prices without having to go too far and you don't have to deal with all of the crazy people in the malls and stores, fighting over the new tickle me Elmo dolls, or get shot trying to get a PS3. I guess the best tip would be to start early, so it is less stressful and you can get everything on your list. Too bad that I can't follow my own advice. I always like to wait until the last minute so that I get totally stressed and then swear that I will never do this again, until next year that is. Anyway I guess the secret is planning, and for once in my life I am going to try it out or maybe I can talk my wife into doing all the shopping.

Tags: Shopping, Christmas

Carnivals

So I've been slacking in my carnival duties lately. I'll blame it on finals and work, not that I have just been lazy. The funny thing is that I have been getting invitations to join other carnivals, which I thought was pretty funny since I thought that I was the only one reading my blog. J/K, I know there are one or two of you out there. Anyway some of them seemed a little fishy, but one seems like it is on the up and up. The Carnival of Thoughtful Consideration, just sounds nice. I have also looked over the site some and it seems pretty cool. It will host both personal finance and non personal finance topics. So anyone interested check out his site.

Tags: carnivals

The Financial Edge Part 2

So I got a ton of information at this seminar. I learned about stocks, options, foreign exchange, mortgages, and more Forex. Which is what I wanted to learn about to begin with. OK, so here is some new stuff I picked up that I did not know. In Forex the pip is the smallest unit of currency. A one cent move = 100 pips. A lot usually has 100 - 1 leverage. A standard lot is worth 1,000 dollars or $10 a pip. A mini lot is worth $100 or $1 a pip. There are also mini/mini lots, but I won't get into those. The dollar is the benchmark in the foreign exchange market and currencies are traded in pairs. Pretty basic stuff, but I didn't know about it. I've been practice trading on forex.com, but still don't have a clue to what I am doing, well maybe a little. Anyway The Financial Edge gave us a ton of info in a short period of time, but the classes were well worth it. The idea behind the short seminars is to pound you full of information, leaving you wanting to learn more and getting you to go to more seminars which cost an arm and a leg. I personally can't afford them, so I will stick to trying to learn forex on my own or from reading some books. All in all I enjoyed the seminar and can't say anything bad about it.

Tags: Seminars, forex

The Financial Edge

Well I am currently going to another seminar. This one is for 3 days and is run by John Hyland of The Financial Edge. Today was mostly an overview of what we will be learning: Real Estate, Stocks, Forex, Options, and more Real Estate. I got invited by a friend and they are also giving away Metastock software and some Real Estate software for free. So I figured why not, learn something and get something for free. Win, Win situation. Turns out I am actually picking up a lot. John Hyland is a very good speaker and motivator. He says the keys to success are:

1) Own and operate your own business
2) Residual Income
3) Multiple sources of Income
4) Asset Protection

He also told us that 82% of people who try something new will succeed at what ever they do. So far I am enjoying the class, but really want to work with the software. Tomorrow we will talk about stocks and options, so that should be very interesting. I will post some of the things that I learn tomorrow.

Tags: seminars, education, stocks

Skip A Payment For Christmas

We have a loan that we are paying for some work we did on our house. We got a letter in the mail the other day saying that we could skip a payment for Christmas. Yeah right, that's all I need to make my debt longer. I thought this was pretty weird, but I have been seeing that other bloggers have been getting the same letters, some from auto loans. The Consumerist has an article about VW, and I will teach you to be rich has the original post for VW and it is very interesting. So skip a payment now and get the shaft later. Nice, I think I will pass. I have enough debt to pay off.

So Maybe I Missed A Few Steps

Okay so as I was setting new goals or revisiting old ones, I may have missed a couple of steps according to CNNMoney.com. Money 101 has a list of Top Things to Know [about] Setting Priorities.

1) Narrow your objectives. My objectives are two spread out and not really focused, which was the idea to begin with.
2) Focus first on the goals that matter. Getting out of debt should be my number one goal, and I need to focus on that.
3) Be prepared for conflicts. I have conflicting goals, one I want to get out of debt and two I want to invest. I need to work more on getting out of debt.
4) Put time on your side. I know I have time to get out of debt and to invest, but I feel like I am rushed to do both, especially the getting out of debt part.

These are just the first couple of ideas that they have. Check out the whole article if you are interested in more. Personally I need to work on getting out of debt and setting goals with my wife, so that she is more involved. I also need to work on my spending and budget. I've been using Money 2006, but it looks like I might have to go to something a little more simple for budgeting.
I may have to check out Mvelopes or some simple form of budgeting. We aren't behind on any of our bills, but I would like to get them paid off faster. If anyone has any budgeting ideas, I could use all the help that I can get.

Time to Get Serious: Goal Setting Time Again

I figured now would be a good time before the Holiday's hit and things get out of hand to refocus on my goals for the year. If I do it now and not at the end of the year as a new year's resolution, I will probably have a better chance of not only reaching these goals, but also not giving up on them like I usually do with my new year's resolution. So here are some short term goals.

1) Finish the website I am having built for work to bring in more leads. Maybe increase some income.

2) Get focused on bringing in some more income to pay debt and invest.

3) Start bird-dogging, not just talking about it.

4) Get our house organized and give up my office space for the babies room. By the way it's a girl, so it looks like I will be painting again.

5) I need to really get going on this REI if I am serious about it.

6) Get in shape, so not only can I keep up with the baby, but they say staying healthy can save you money in medical bills and make you more money. (Less calling in sick).

So this is the short list, but I will come up with some more. What goals do you have and what resolutions are you planning on making?

Tags: Goals

Rule #1 Update

Well I've been using Phil Town's Rule #1 method and in five months I've made 10% on my investment. Not bad in my book, I still have 7 months to go. I probably would have done better, but I make a couple of stupid amateur mistakes second guessing myself and the technical signs. So I hear ten percent is kind of the market average, so everything else from here is gravy. As long as Phil Town's method keeps working I will continue to use it, anyway I said that I would give it a year. We will see what happens and I will keep you posted on my Amateur investment progress.

Tags: Investing Rule #1

Happy Turkey Day!!!!

I know it's a little early, but I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving Day. No posts tomorrow, so Happy Thanksgiving's Today.

Carnival #75 Is Up

Thanks to Everybody Loves Your Money for hosting Carnival of Personal Finance #75. Also Thanks for including my article on Rules to Get Rich By. Definitely check out the carnival the set up is very interesting. Don't you love used car dealers? I will pick out some of my favorites from the front and back lots and post their links here later. So don't miss out on the Carnival, you may get some good deals. Okay here is one of my favorites from the Front Lot - Rule #15 all or nothing by My Open Wallet. A lot of times we forget to look around and smell the roses. Here is another good one by Geniustypes.com called See Money Differently to Attract More. Only a couple for now will add more later.

Forex 101

So since I am starting to get interested in Forex, I figured I would write about some of the basics that I've picked up. First of all Forex or Foreign Exchange Market deals with trading currencies with other countries or other countries currencies. The Forex market is also highly liquid, you can get in and out fairly quickly because there are always willing buyers. The Forex market is opened 24 hrs a day from Sunday afternoon to Friday afternoon. So you can pretty much trade anytime day or night you get the urge. "There are two reasons to buy and sell currencies. About 5% of daily turnover is from companies and governments that buy or sell products and services in a foreign country or must convert profits made in foreign currencies into their domestic currency. The other 95% is trading for profit, or speculation"(KingCommodities.com). In the Forex market you can also buy on margin or leverage. On Forex.com for a $250 account you have leverage of 200:1. That means basically that you could trade for up to $50,000 with a $250 account. This is the part that sounds like trouble to me. I think buying on margin could be a little risky. Anyway here is my disclaimer. I know absolutely nothing about trading on Forex, so I am not giving out any advice, I am just commenting on some stuff that I have learned because I would like to get into Forex trading. Please leave any comments if you can give me some advice on Forex Trading or if you know of a book that I could buy. Thanks.

Discipline and Determination

From reading other blogs and personal finance articles I've found that to be successful you have to be disciplined and determined. First you need to have discipline, stay away from buying stuff that you don't actually need. Also try to get the best price for the things that you do need. Discipline and Determination will also get you plugging away towards what ever goals you have set for yourself. This works for Personal Finance, Debt Reduction, and Investing. From just reading other peoples blogs I've found out that there are a lot of determined people out there, which is good because it helps me stay determined to reach my goals. So to all of you personal finance bloggers, keep up the good work and Thank You.

Rules to Get Rich By

This month's issue of Money Magazine has 25 Rules to Grow Rich By. I am not going to list them all, but am going to list a couple that caught my eye. One of the rule's is to save 10% of your salary. I am actually hitting that mark this year and plan to continue each following year. It also says to keep three months worth of living expenses in a savings account (Emergency Fund). I am currently working on this one but am no where close to where I need to be yet. You need life insurance to cover at least 5 to 10 years of your salary in case you pass away. Some other interesting points are don't spend more than 2.5 times your salary on a home purchase. We are OK on this point, in fact we are under. If you don't understand how an investment works don't buy it. This is me with Forex investing. I want to get into it, but just don't know anything about it. Resist the urge to buy new electronic gadgets. This is the hard one for me I always want to keep up with the Jones' on this one, but I will have to give it up. There are a lot of other great points. Check out November's Money Magazine. Also Free Money Finance has written some interesting things about the same article, I will post the link here.

Pay Off Your Debts Fast

So I was reading an article by Liz Pulliam Weston on Huge debts, paid off fast, which I realized didn't tell me much more than all of the other articles or books that I have read. It basically says to pay yourself first, spend less than you earn, be frugal, etc.... One thing that was different is she says that it helps to have a dream, mine is Financial Freedom. The article also says to do what ever it takes, cut out luxuries, pick up a part time job. I myself am going to start bird-dogging during my spare time (Hunting out potential investment homes for investors). I am also going to try to pick up some extra cash by cooking or bbqing. A couple of other good ideas are taking your lunch to work, cut out the stuff you can live without, about the best thing I got out of the article was to check out Dave Ramsey's book "The Total Money Makeover", which I plan on checking out. If anyone has any info on this book, any comments would be appreciated.

Out of Town

I will be out of town for the next couple of days, so you won't be seeing any posting for a couple of days and I haven't gotten big enough yet to have guest writers, so sorry. Will be back Sunday, and will be posting to make up for lost days.

Cutting My Dish Network Bill

In an effort to cut our costs and to pay more on our credit card bills we have cut our Dish Network bill and package in half. We were paying $125 per month for every channel imaginable, and now we are paying around $49 for half. With the money we are saving we can invest more or pay more on our credit cards. Forget the latte factor, cut your cable/satellite factor. Anyway I know you are thinking that $125 is pretty crazy, but it was something I thought I could not live without. Now with work, school, and blogging. I don't spend a lot of time watching TV, except sports. So maybe when my contract is up I will drop it all of the way.

Tags: debt reduction

This Weeks Carnivals

The Road 2 Riches is in two carnivals this week. Thanks to City Girl's Financial Blog for posting my article on "Do you want to be rich" for The Carnival of Personal Finance. Also thanks to AllFinancialMatters for posting my article on "Real Estate Riches Part 2" for the Carnival of Investing. I haven't had a chance to read any of the articles yet, but I will post some of my favorites later. Great job to both hosts for great carnival set ups. I will also be giving away a David Bach CD to a random post on the Do you want to be rich article.

My First Contest

I will be giving away a CD from David Bach on the Finish Rich Series to someone who posts a comment on my Do you want to be rich post, all you need to do is answer the question on why you want to be rich and I will randomly pick one of the comments to win the CD. Forgive me if this is lame, but this is my first contest. So leave a comment, what do you have to lose.

Tags: contest

Do You Want to Be Rich?

Who doesn't, David Bach the author of The Automatic Millionaire says that he can tell if you are going to be rich by asking five questions. I am only going to talk about the first one because it caught my interest. It was do you want to be rich and what are your reasons. If you say to have a humongous house or to buy an expensive sports car, chances are you may not make it. He goes on to say that your values are what will make you rich. If your motivation to get rich is for retirement, a child's college fund, financial freedom, and such, chances are that you will meet your goal. So why do I want to be rich? Well for starters, we will need a bigger house eventually once the baby gets here, then we need to start thinking about college funds, and retirement. My main reason is financial freedom, I want to be out of debt and not have to worry about it any more. I don't want to miss out on family, friends, and life. These are the real things that make you rich.

Why do you want to be rich? I will give the Dave Bach CD to someone randomly who leaves a comment on this post and answers this question. So this will be my first contest give away.

Real Estate Riches Part 2

In the book Real Estate Riches by Dolf De Roos, Dolf states that there are eight golden rules to property investment.

1) You Make your money when you buy. So you want to buy a property that's worth more at a much lower price.

2) Always buy from a motivated seller. Or a desperate seller, divorced people, homes on the market too long, someone looking to get out fast, etc....

3) Fall in love with the deal, not the property. Don't get attached to a property, it's an investment to bring in capital.

4) Never be the first to name a figure - that person always loses. You want to have the leverage when bidding.

5) Be counter cyclical. Like with stocks buy when the market is selling low, sell when the market is high.

6) Always try to buy with zero or little down. Put less down so you can get more properties.

7) Seldom Sell. Hold on to your properties, let their value increase.

8) The deal of the decade comes along about once a week. Put in the work, look for houses, find your deal.

Though I know absolutely nothing about REI, but am trying to learn, I found this book very educational for the beginner. Check out part One if you get a chance, Real Estate Riches.

Real Estate Riches

I just finished reading Real Estate Riches by Dolf De Roos, Ph.D. One of the Rich Dad's Advisor series books. I had a lot of doubts and thought that it would be very vague, but it turned out to be an excellent book for a beginner or someone interested in getting into Real Estate Investing. The book was very easy to read and motivational. It shows that REI is not rocket science, but it does take some work. I will be talking more about the book in other articles, but I wanted to include some of the thoughts he has on REI rentals. Whether to choose Commercial or Residential properties to rent out. Here are his pros and cons.

1. Residential Rentals are quoted monthly or weekly, while Commercial Rentals are quoted annually. Here he is talking about rental payments.

2. In rental property tenants don't have an interest in fixing up your property, while commercial tenants do have an interest in not only fixing the property, but also improving the property.

3. Leases are short for rental property, leases are long for commercial.

4. Capital required for rental property can be minimal, while commercial can require a large amount of capital.

These are just of the few pros and cons. I still think I would be interested in Residential Rentals, just to get started.

Tags: Book Review, REI

Some of my favorite articles this week

Here are some of my favorite articles this week from the carnivals of personal finance and investing. The first one was a little mushy, but makes a lot of sense and made me feel all warm and happy inside. It's by Christine Kane on "Don't Get Rich Quick, Be Rich Quick." Sometimes we get so involved in personal finance that we may miss out what's going on around us. The next blog I liked was one by Stock Market Beat on "One Reason Starbucks Continues To Do So Well." I found it interesting not only because I invest in Starbucks, but because I learned that Starbucks pretty much owns all of it's locations. Here's another one I like To Become Wealthy: Starting in Real Estate. I found this one interesting because I too am interested in getting into REI, probably more on the rental side. These are just a couple, but I am sure I will find plenty more.

Tags: Carnival of Personal Finance, Carnival of Investing

Update

Got everything working again, including breadcrumbs. So the blog will be staying like this for a long time. Thanks again to Ramani and Hoctro for their awesome hacks. Look a previous post for links.

New Design Again!

Ok I promise this is the last time I mess with my template, but I really wanted the 3 columns. Anyway I got most of everything up, except breadcrumbs, which is one of my favorites. Hopefully I can get it figured out with some begging to the designer. Anyway this will definately be the last time for a long, long time. I know you are saying that you have heard all of this before, but this time it's for real (I hope). Let me know what you think of the new blog set up. Have to give props to Ramani for the design of the 3 column minima template. Check out his website he has lots of great hacks, Hackosphere. I also need to give props out to Hoctro for the breadcrumb page set up, especially if I can get it working again. Check out his blog, lots of great hacks: Hoctro's Place.

This Weeks Carnivals

This week The Road 2 Riches is in two carnivals, the carnival of personal finance and the carnival of investing. I want to thank It's Just Money for including my article on Credit Score Hell. I also want to thank My 1st Million at 33 for including my article on Investing in Stocks and Personal Morals. Both blogs are great and have a lot of useful information. Check them out and check out the carnivals. I will post some of my favorites later.

Credit Score Hell

If you are wondering about the past couple of titles, it's October and close to Halloween. Money Central has an excellent article called "Weird stuff that hurts your credit", as if I did not have enough to worry about rebuilding my credit and paying off our credit card debt. One of the things that I didn't know about is that Capital One and American Express do not share you credit limit with the credit agencies and this can hurt your score. I have a couple of Capital One cards, but I have maxed them out a couple times so my credit report shows my highest limits on each card. Another thing that I didn't know is that the credit agencies have different scoring groups or score cards. Depending on where you fall, you credit activities can move you up or down to a better or worse scoring group. As if I didn't have enough worries about jacking up my credit. Transfering all of your credit debt onto one low interest card can also hurt your credit score. It seems that they would rather you have lots of cards with lower amounts owed on each. Settling debts with companies you owe is also bad for your credit score. It seem's that waiting for it to go into collections is better for you (this makes no sense to me). Here is my favorite one, unpaid traffic or parking fines, and old library fines will be reported and effect your credit score. Nice huh? So return all those old library books and pay your fines. Be happy that they aren't reporting late video fees yet or I would be in some serious trouble.

Credit Card Horror Story

Even though we are trying to get out of credit card debt, I still find myself wanting to charge more stuff. It's like being a credit card junkie. The worst part is that it is me, not my wife who finds it so easy to bust out the credit cards from their hiding place. Well reading some different blogs, I can't remember which, but when I find it again, I will give credit to the author's idea. To keep herself from using her credit cards she actually froze them in the freezer. I thought what an awesome idea. If it's a real emergency you can bust them out and thaw out the ice, otherwise it would be too much hassle to mess with. If this doesn't work my next option will be to shred them all. Which I might end up doing anyway. Anyone have any other ideas that might work better?

Get Motivated Seminar Coming Back

Well not exactly to town, but it is coming to El Paso, TX and seeing that I have never been to El Paso, I figured why not go again. This time I am getting my mentor to go with me and a couple of friends and family. They have some pretty good speakers this time, all but three are different from the last time I saw them; Phil Town, Zig Ziglar, and Tom Hopkins. Some of the new speakers are Amy Jones, Bill Bartman, and Ruben Gonzalez. The main reason I am going is to see Phil Town, since I am following his investing advice, but I really also like Zig Ziglar, and am very interested in seeing what the other speakers have to say. So even if I only pick up a couple of new tips or ideas, I thing the 8 hr trip will be worth it.

Carnival of Personal Finance # 71

The Carnival of Personal Finance #71 is up at Fat Pitch Financials. Just wanted to thank him for the great job and for including my article on Planning on the Cost of Our Baby. There are a lot of good articles this week. Some of my favorites are a Review of The Money Coach's Guide to Your First Million by Mighty Bargain Hunter. Thanks to his review I plan on reading this book. Even if I only get one new piece of information out of it, it will definitely be worth the read. Another one is Paying off Old Past Due Bills Without Hurting your credit by Searchlight Crusade. I just actually did this and it works, but I took a different route. I first disputed the claim and had it removed from all of the credit companies, then I disputed the claim with the collections office, they didn't drop the claim, but they did remove it, and I only had to pay less than 1/3 of the original debt. Anyway I get away from myself, check out the Carnival of Personal Finance, as you can tell I am.

Investing In Stocks and Personal Morals

I was watching Jim Cramer on Mad Money over the weekend. Not that I follow his investing style, but I do think he's great and knows how to put on a show. Boo-ya. Any way he was talking about investing in DEO. Diagio PLC (DEO) distributes branded alcohol Ala Johnny Walker, Jose Cuervo, Bailey's, Captain Morgan, etc.... I didn't run the numbers, but he seemed to like it, 10% per year consistently. What came to my mind though was the morality of investing in these companies, such as Phillip Morris. I don't know if I would invest in either of these companies even though Diagio is the less of the two evils. What are your morals when it comes to investing in stocks. Does it matter if they hurt anyone or just that they make you money? Personally I think I will stay away from these companies and others. I like environmentally and people friendly companies. What are your thoughts?

Giving to charities

As always Free Money Finance has a great topic for Sunday, "Giving to a Few Charities, or Several -- Which is Best?". I personally believe that giving to a few charities is better. I guess because we don't have a lot to give at this time, but the money we do give I believe has a bigger impact because we focus on one charity at this time. Our main charity is our church. We do not go to one of the richer parishes in town so I believe we help by contributing what we can to our church. Once our incomes pick up, or when we get out of credit card debt I would like to give to a cancer foundation. My father died of cancer at a young age, and I think that not only would this honor his memory, but it would help everyone else out there who has cancer. So I believe that giving to a few charities is best, but maybe this is because we don't have a lot to give at this moment. If you have a lot maybe you can spread it out and make a difference. What do you think? Thanks to FMF for having a great topic for Sunday. If you haven't check out his website, I suggest you do. It is one of my favorites.

Account Passwords

Since I am the one who takes care of all of our bills, investments, banking, and savings online, I have about 50 million passwords that I have a hard time remembering sometimes. Well actually a lot of times. Well I've been thinking about opening up a safety deposit box at our bank so that we can keep important papers and a list of our accounts and passwords. Well it turns out that this may be a really good idea. Check out Liz Weston's article on Don't take your passwords to the grave. So I will call around a check out the prices. It's not like we will need a very large box. Will keep you updated on my progress and the prices.

Articles for this week

Okay here are some of my favorite articles for The Carnival of Personal Finance #70. The first is Investing 101 - Getting Started by My Wealth Builder. It's always good to pick up new ideas since I am an Amateur Investor. The next article I liked was from Be Reasonable called Kiyosaki and Trump Perfect Together. I had been tempted to buy the book because I liked Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but I had read another negative review from FMF check out his view here. Another good one is from Taking Control Over Money, Do Sweat the Small Stuff. I still have a lot more to go over, but these are the ones that caught my eye.

Finished

Well I finished my online defensive driving course and it was pure hell. Not that the company was bad, but it was just so boring. I kept getting kicked out because I would fall asleep or turn my attention else where. Even though it was boring it was still probably a hundred times better than sitting in a class for 8 hrs and at least with the online class you can log on and off as much as you want so not to bore yourself to death. Anyway it's done and I just wanted to get it off my chest. If you ever have to take defensive driving, online is the way to go.

Planning on the Cost of Our Baby

So since this is our first baby, I guess I have been worrying about the cost, what things we need to get, and all kinds of other stuff. Well Kiplinger's Success With Your Money magazine has a great article on the costs of a new born and what to expect. The article is called "When Baby Makes Three (or more)"; I like to call it a bun in the oven. The article states that even though having your first child can be a financial shock, there are tax advantages and you do save money by spending more time at home with your child and with family. Your baby's first years can cost between $4000 and $6000. I guess it's time to cut out some of our luxuries and spending money going out. We've tightened our budget to get out of debt, but now it looks like we will have to do more. This doesn't include the price of having to move into a new house. I think we are okay for a little while. We have a small starter house, but an extra bedroom. Goodbye computer room :( . At least this will give us more than a couple years before we need a bigger house. The article says to make sure you have life insurance, health insurance, and some type of disability insurance. The news isn't all bad, there are some good tax breaks that I will get into in my next post along with some of the insurance info. If anyone has any advice or can give me some ideas of extra costs or ways to save money, I would be very greatful.

Happiness

The other day I got to my class a little early so I decided to hit the library and see if I could find anything interesting on personal finance, real estate investing, or personal growth. I found a 13 CD lesson on "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey, so I checked it out. At first I thought it was pretty boring and didn't think I was going to be able to make it through the first CD, things have gotten very interesting and I am finding that it can be applied to personal finance, debt management, and improving your life and values. One of the things that caught my attention was on one of his lessons on Happiness. He says "happiness is the desire and ability to sacrifice now for what we what eventually". This caught my attention because this is what we are all trying to do. We give up things we want to get out of debt and to invest in the future. Even though it may not feel like it sometimes, these sacrifices bring us happiness. Maybe not at the time that we are giving up some impulse buy that we want, but later when we find our selves financially free.

Trackback Finally

I finally was able to get trackback working. Not that I did anything myself, but I sure can copy and paste pretty good. Anyway thanks to Logical Philosopher for not only getting my Haloscan comments working, but I now also have trackback. Thanks also go out to Peter at Utter Muttering for getting this working. Good job guys!

No Carnivals this week

Well things have been a little crazy this week and I wasn't able to get anything going for the Carnival of Personal finance, but I am looking forward to checking out what everyone else has to say. There are always a lot of great articles and I will post some of my favorites. I will try to get back into the groove next week.

A Snag on the Road 2 Financial Freedom

I have hit a snag down the road, literally. Well I actually hit this snag a couple months ago. While on the way to work and flying down the highway I got a speeding ticket. So I had to shell out $100+ to be able to take defensive driving. As usual I forgot all about it and now have to shell out another 40 some dollars to take the class online and get my driving record shipped to me before my deadline. I may see if I can get an extension so that I am not rushing it and can find a cheaper class and buy me some time by ordering my driving record myself (it's $25 for a rush). The moral of the story is don't break the laws, follow the norms. For me since I am trying to get out of debt and watching all of my personal finances I am finding this a big waste of money. That's almost $200 that I could have spent paying off credit debt or investing. Like the commercial says that is going to cost me 200 Jr cheeseburgers. Oh well live and learn.

Credit Report Update

So my saga to get my credit report clean continues. Luckily with some happy news. When I received my free credit report this year I noticed a couple of unpaid debts that weren't mine. So I disputed them with the credit agencies. I had all of them removed except one from American Airlines that said that I owed them money on an employee voucher that was used in 2000. Well the funny thing is that I have never worked for American Airlines. So yesterday I called and talked to the collecting agency that is in charge of this account. I got myself all pumped up and ready to fight. I make the call and end up with a very nice, helpful collection agent. We discussed what the problem was, he talked to his supervisor, and resolved the problem. I just need to send in some paperwork describing my grievance and I am done. I definately was not expecting this. So thanks to the friendly collection agent I am one step closer to having my credit report fixed.

Carnival of Personal Finance #69 Is Up

The Carnival of Personal Finance #69 by Flexo is up. Thanks to Flexo for including my article on Property Taxes Are on the Rise. There are a lot of great articles this week. Some of my favorites are Mighty Bargain Hunter's post on Are money saving tips unhelpful to people who really need them? Sometimes we forget that saving and getting out of debt can be really difficult when you are struggling for money. Another post I like is from The Buck Stops Here, Extra Income. This is one area that I have been trying to come up with different ideas, check out some of his. I haven't read all the articles yet, but I am sure that there will be a lot more that I will like.

Property Taxes Are On The Rise

Because I'm starting to get interested in property investing, I've been checking out a lot of real estate articles. I came across this article on yahoo "The Hottest Part of the Housing Market:Taxes" and feel like this is something I understand. Though the housing market is still good here in Texas, a lot of homeowner's are finding out year to year that their property taxes continue to increase. Especially in the middle class and upper class neighborhoods. Though the upper class may not feel the bite, the middle class sure does. Working in insurance we get a lot of calls from our customers complaining each year about the property value and tax increases. Though we have nothing to do with this we do give them some options of fighting the increases. Here are some things you can do to get your property value lowered if you think it's too high.

1) First contact your county tax appraisal district to see what their rationale was on the increase and see if you can get them to change it.
2) Research the values of the houses around you and make sure your home is not the only home overvalued.
3) If worse comes to worse you may need to get an independant inspector to value your home. Usually the price for this is between $200-$400. So if it's something minor you don't want to waste your time, but if it's going to save you $1000 or more, it would definately be worth going through the hassle.

States are trying to get as much as they can out of taxing you and your property tax is a pretty eazy place to do it. Remember you don't have to stick with the value that they put on your home, you can always dispute the property tax and save yourself some money.

Spend Less Than You Earn

It seems that I am seeing and hearing this everywhere now. I guess it's like when you get a new car and all of a sudden you start seeing them everywhere. In my accounting class we were talking about different aspects of business and all of a sudden my professor busts out with the most important thing in business is to make more than you spend. That is the secret. Wow, not only is that the secret for business, but it's the main mantra for personal finance. Spend less than you earn! It's funny how when you start focusing on something it turns up all around you. The best part is that it reinforces my goals. A higher education is really worth something.

No More Junk Mail

Since the time that I opted out for telephone telemarketers, we have been receiving a ton of junk mail, credit card offers, preapproved loans etc.... Anyway when I ordered my annual credit report at http://annualcreditreport.com/ I was given the option to opt out of pre-approved credit offers. You can either opt out for 5 years or you can opt out forever. Of course I chose forever. Well it's been a couple of months and my flow of junk mail has slowed down quite a bit. Which means less time shredding. Bizrate.com has a great article on "How to Opt Out of Everything", not just pre-approved credit cards, but also junk mail, telemarketing calls (if you haven't already) and they even tell you how to get your financial institutions to stop sharing your information with others. Check it out. Lots of good information, and I will be sending a letter to opt out of the rest of the junk mail we have been getting.

Well That's One Goal

Well I got my HSBCdirect savings account set up. Now I just need to wait three days to start funding it. I also need to set up a goal for the amount of money that we are going to need in our emergency fund, plus some extra for investing. I have been reading alot on real estate investments and think I might be interested in rental properties, but I want to get out of credit card debt first. Anyway I figure I can save a little extra for either and emergency or investing and grow some interest on it also.

The Carnival of Personal Finance Hits the Trail

The carnival of personal finance is being hosted at Punny Money this week. Definitely take a look at this unique and comedic website. As always there are tons of great articles and lots of information. I want to thank Nick of Punny Money for including my article Time to Buckle Down on Debt. As soon as I get a chance to read some of the articles I will post some of my favorites here.

My Online Savings Choice

Well it looks like we will be going with HSBC direct as our emergency savings fund. The clincher was last night on the way to a birthday party when I saw that we had a local branch, so between that and the ATM card I think I have finally made up my mind. I know you are thinking it is about time, but being new to all this I had to check out all of my options. Anyway I will be taking the plunge today and setting up our online savings account so that I can incorporate our pay ourselves first mentality in to our emergency fund.

Time to Buckle Down on Debt

Now that the spending holidays are upon us (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's) it is time to refocus and buckle down on debt. This is the time of year when it becomes real easy to lose your focus and start to spend and charge costumes, gifts, decorations, and all kinds of other holiday cheer. Though you don't have to be a holiday Grinch, be sure to keep the reins on your shopping and spending habits. Remember we are trying to get out of debt here. So instead of going all out on holiday shopping remember to be frugal and don't try keeping up with the Joneses. I know that my frugality and money thriftiness usually go out the door this time of year. So what am I going to do? Well I am glad you asked. It is time to bring myself down to reality and focus on our credit card debt again. Not that we have forgotten or fallen back into our old evil ways, but a friendly reminder of where we are and where we don't want to go will put the holidays into perspective. So here are some steps I plan on taking before the holidays.

1) Make a list of what we owe. In an effort to refocus, I want to make sure we have an idea of exactly what we owe and make sure that we are on track to repay and get out of debt hell.

2) Time to re-prioritize our repayments. We have been paying more that the minimum balance on all of our credit card debt, but I think I am going to start working on a reverse snowballing effect. I think paying off some of our smaller balances first, which happen to have the higher interest rates, will not only makes us feel like we have accomplished something, but will help us knock out our debt faster.

3) Update our budget. Now is the time to update our budget to include what we are going to spend over the holidays, we also need to adjust our budget for our impending arrival.

We usually go crazy during the holidays, so this year the wife and I are going to try and be more focused on our spending habits. This year we will need to be more frugal on our holiday spending and our gift giving. So what kind of plans do you have over the holidays? What are you going to do to save money and what are you going to limit yourself to? The most important thing to remember over the holidays is friends and family. These are the richest gifts you could ever have.