Getting Back To Basics

Well I think it is time to get back to the basics. We have been spending more than we should be and have been coming in short by the end of the month. We have been spending a lot of money on eating out and buying a lot of little things, that we don't really need. It's time for us to start cutting some of these things out. It's funny how fast small purchases add up. I also need to start working on our emergency fund again. I have been slacking on saving money in our emergency fund and had to bust out a credit card to pay for a unforeseen plumbing problem. So we are now back in credit card debt. Not that the amount is major, but now we have a debt that we didn't have before to pay off. Anyway I will be working on a new budget and hopefully we will be able to stick to it.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Credit Report...

So in an effort to continue reaching for our financial freedom, I ordered my credit report to see how bad things were. If anyone is interested you can get a free credit report each year from Transunion, Equifax, and Experian from http://annualcreditreport.com. They charge extra if you want to receive your credit scores, but it's a good way to check out your credit history.

After getting over my fear of knowing I have horrible credit, I pulled up all my reports and it turns out my credit is not so bad after all. I have a couple of things to take care of, but all in all it didn't look as bad as I thought it would. I have some discrepencies that I need to take care of, but nothing that will keep me from reaching our five year goal. My wife by the way does not have to worry about these problems. Anyway I am feeling much better about getting our finances in order and meeting our goals.

Our 5 year plan

Hope everyone had a safe and happy July 4th. The wife and I worked on our five year plan over the past couple of days.

Here are some of the goals we came up with:

1) Get out of Debt! Especially credit card debt
2) Have Children
3) Invest for Retirement
4) Remodel Kitchen
5) Landscape our yard
6) Get in Shape/ Lose weight
7) Learn a craft or hobby that will bring in more income
8) Continue my education, College and Investments

We have already started working on paying off our debt and have worked on a 5 yr budget that will allow us to not only pay off our substantial credit card debt, but will allow us to be finacial free, so that we can get into a bigger house and rent our current cozy little house out for some passive income. The other goal we have already started working on is investing for our retirement. I have gone back to college to work on a business degree and am trying to read everything I can on finances and investing. I will continue to post our progress as we meet our goals.