From the category archives:
I received in the mail this week another notice from my credit card hiking my rate, for no apparent reason. It’s now up to 29.99% from 9.99% when I opened it just over a year ago. Luckily, this rate hike does not affect because I never use this card for purchases. This is the card [...]
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Last week my girlfriend and I were watching, “Real Estate Intervention” on HGTV. It’s a heartbreaking show at times. It shows real families that for one reason or another (job loss, relocation) have to sell their home, often a price much lower than what they were anticipating.
Last week we watched the first episode where Mike, [...]
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It would seem that everyone is aware of the dangers of living with too much debt. After the events of the last two years, anyone who does not yet know that having a high level of debt will have a negative impact on your financial security in the present and years to come should [...]
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It’s been awhile since I did a debt update here, and things are progressing nicely so I updated my spreadsheet and thought I’d share here.
I’ve decided to include the balance of my car loan (around 4.5% APR on the loan), along with the amount I still owe my mother, and my student loans. The $11,000 [...]
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I mentioned last week how Murphy has visited our house. Car problems, house problems and other emergency expenses zapped our emergency fund. Now instead of making massive debt repayments, we’re concentrating on trying to revive our pathetic emergency savings account.
I hate doing that.
That said, I do have something to celebrate. We took care of the [...]
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OK, you’ve decided to get out of debt, but what’s the best way to pay it off? Snowballs, highest interest first, etc—there’s all kinds of theories, but the one we can all agree on is that faster is better when it comes to getting out of debt. It really isn’t much fun!
It helps to have [...]
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When the topic of credit cards comes up, you’re probably used to hearing only the bad things. But, in reality, for most of us credit cards have done us a valuable service: helped us establish a credit history. Let’s be honest, few banks are going to hand out money for a big [...]
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The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (Also known as “The CARD Act” and S.414) was signed by President Obama on May 22 and the first phase of it has just taken effect (August 20), but many of us are wondering—is it going to help or hurt our efforts at debt freedom?
Credit [...]
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I recently saw an online article about a study of the debt incurred by plans of professional European Soccer teams. The study was interesting for a number of reasons. First, it was commissioned by Virgin Money—to promote its credit card. Second, it showed results with the average number of fans of each [...]
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When should you not avoid debt? When is it better to finance a purchase?
I think there are two requirements you need to meet before deciding to finance a purchase. If you can meet both of them, you should finance the purchase.
Rule #1: The monthly payment should put no strain on your budget
And by no strain, [...]
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