Easy Change

When I was younger, I used to talk to my grandfather quite frequently about money and money issues. He started teaching me this stuff when I was in high school and college mostly. But it was really interesting when I look back on it because I always felt like he was out of touch. I always felt like he was not really able to understand how difficult it was to actually save money and have that much "extra" left over. I mean, even during my best times, I had only a few hundred dollars of extra money. In fact, it wasn't until I was out of college that I actually had more than 1500 dollars to my name at any one time. My grandfather was wise, however. He touted the idea of index funds. He described to me the ideas associated with great books from Mr. Bogle. And the ideas make sense to me now more than ever. Unfortunately, I didn't jump on them at that point in my life. It wasn't until I was in my mid twenties that I really started to realize the real importance of inves...

From reading various comments, I've decided that it is time to put together a list of reasons that Yahoo! Finance is somewhat annoying to many pf bloggers and other readers out there. With any luck, this will help to improve the finance writing that is being produced. I find it quite annoying actually that many of the ideas and comments go ignored and unanswered by the people in charge over at Yahoo Finance and the authors. These are not all my opinions, they are pretty much gathered from the various comments for the articles. 1. There's nothing new . -- This is by far the complaint that seems to top the comments list. I see some variation of this complaint on almost every single article that is written. This is something that I absolutely have to agree with. What is most interesting about this complaint is that very few of the writers really make an effort to develop original advice content. Most of the writers who are developing new content are using their personal experience...

This weekend was pretty good, but there is definitely still some stuff that needs to be done. I have caught up on a bunch of things lately though so I feel pretty good. Due to a slight injury, I've stopped exercising for the next week or so. I'm hopeful that my body will heal and I will be able to resume afterward. We'll see. In other news, this weekend was a great opportunity to relax and take in some sun. I enjoyed sitting out with my plants and having coffee in the early morning. And a quick walk down the jetty where I live without treating myself to a lunch out was a healthy and frugal activity this weekend. I also was quite productive on the side in order to move some projects forward for side income which is a huge part of paying off debt at this point. Amazingly, this month's finances were all but wrapped up by the 15th of this month, so I am looking forward to getting the final pay of the month and 'closing out the books' lol. It marks the halfway point...

Lately I've been somewhat discouraged. In short, I hurt my back while exercising so my exercise routine is down the drain and while I tried to 'work around' the problem, I'm convinced that I am making it worse, so I have decided to stop exercising until I feel better. Yesterday, I was out for lunch with an old college classmate. It was a great time and we were able to catch up about friends and people we knew etc. But after a little bit of time, we talked about finances. During the lunch I discovered that despite how well I was doing with paying off my debt, I was apparently quite behind. He did an amazing job of paying off his college loans right after college. I had mixed emotions at that point. I was happy for him, but irritated that I hadn't done the same thing. I guess this is why it ranks as one of the biggest financial mistakes I've made. It is also why I crusade against student loan debt and work very hard to talk to people I meet about their college deb...

Well, not long ago, I decided to plant some big pots of vegetables while I did some landscaping in my front area. I had two nice big pots that were already available and so I decided that it would be a good idea to go ahead and plant some vegetables so that I would have some nice eats during the summer. For the vegetables that I picked, I decided on peppers, cucumbers,  string beans, and lettuce. Of course, one of the pots was unfortunately one that had no holes in the bottom and lots of rain threatened to wash out these newly germinated plants. But, after a trip to the store and a quick transplant, they seem to be much better. Now all of the plants are doing well 3 weeks into the planting process. Although some of them are a bit close to one another so I might end up moving them apart to give them more room. But the news so far is encouraging and I am hoping to save some money on groceries in the fall with lots of nice, fresh vegetables. Understanding the up front costs is a majo...

This morning I was flipping through the channels and saw MTV had a marathon of Super Sweet Sixteen on. For those of you who don't know what this show is, it is a reality show where the star is a fifteen year old girl who is planning her sweet sixteen party. Of course, the do tons of little segments with the girls asking for various gifts and different entertainment for the party etc. And I've seen the show before and although it is something that seemed a little ridiculous, I always just figured that was how the "other half" lived. This morning, however, was the topper for me. ::climbs on to soapbox:: It was a girl named stephanie who came across as an absolute spoiled brat. Who knows if that is really her personality or if that was just selective editing and the stress of the situation. But, even assuming that it was not all her fault, the situation just seemed absurd. She had an "invitation" party where she had a special costume and performers etc just to...

PMI, as most of you probably already know, is Private Mortgage Insurance and is basically designed to protect the lender so that if anything happens to the borrower, that the lender is assured to get the value of the loan back. Unfortunately for me, when purchasing the condo I live in, it was not with enough money to avoid the PMI. The PMI is no laughing matter as it sucks away close to 150 dollars per month. Since I've lived here over three years, that calculates out to about 5400 dollars. It is a horrible waste of money. Unfortunately, the real estate market has been relatively flat where I am and the appreciation is going slower than I would have liked. In order to get PMI removed, you often need to have another appraisal done on your property. And luckily for me, a few things have been done to the property (new steps, new landscaping, and a new roof) which might improve the appraised value. But the first step is calling my mortgage company which I dutifully did this morning. T...

Last night I was trying to figure out what the balance on one of my credit cards that I had done the transfer for my unsecured student loans was and I found out that it was much less than I thought. Originally, I thought it was about 1600 and then on the voice machine it said that it was only 890 dollars. I was pleasantly surprised. I somehow thought that it would be more than that but I must have made some payments in there somewhere that really knocked the balance down. So finishing that bill off should be an easy feat for the second half of this month since there seems to be quite a bit extra in the checking account right now. Once that is done, more than half of the balance of that loan will be paid off. Now I just need to get my No Credit Needed chart updated again. :)

Everyone who is involved in personal finance knows about the idea of debt snowballing. Well, this process has worked quite well for me lately. I've maintained a chart over at <a href=" http://www.ncnnetwork.com ">No Credit Needed</a> and I find that it works quite well as a means of keeping track of my debt reduction. I've made posts before on how I dislike student loans and the process and how my particular situation was handled. I graduated with tons of student loans and even after consolidation, there were too many bills and they cost me way too much in interest and there was no one there to be an advocate for me. But now that things are going well, household spending is under control and the emergency fund is growing steadily in a high-yield account over at ING (submit your email on the right for a link to open an account and get a bonus), I've realized that the finish line really is not that far away. About 18 months ago, I got really serious abo...

Charity and donating is always an interesting topic when it comes to personal finance. Some people donate time, others money. And regardless of what people give away, the reasons for doing so are almost as varied as the donations themselves. Recently I heard a report that discussed how local charities are being rated and there is a <a href=" http://www.charitynavigator.org/ ">nice website</a> that you can go to to learn more about your favorite charities and determine how they are actually using your money. If you are anything like me, you want to make sure that your money is being used efficiently. But getting to more pressing and current issues, the G8 summit is on. And one of the major issues being discussed is aid to Africa. I find this particularly interesting because people are actually working on providing more and more aid to Africa - often to combat the issue of poor medical care. But despite all the attention that Africa gets, especially now with the cr...

I was about to write this as a comment, but its quite long and brings up a ton of issues so here goes. First, check out  <a href=" http://hereverycentcounts.blogspot.com/2007/06/money-and-etiquette-why-are-important.html ">this story at here every cent counts</a>. Now on to my response. I am just mortified by this story. I cannot even imagine that people with kids would expect someone in college to pay for their own dinner. I'm assuming that this is an aunt/uncle/great aunt/great uncle situation and that you are a young college student in late teens, early twenties with no full time job. All of my answers below are based on those assumptions. If that is the case, they should *splurge* the 20 bucks for dinner. They are an adult here and as much as I believe that you should be independent, while you are in college and struggling for money, you should be treated on an occasion like this. Big Question: How do your mom and/or dad and/or other immediate family ...

This has been quite a ride. Net worth for this month is up again, thanks to the stock market and the continued contributions to retirement accounts. After doing some increased contributions at the beginning of last quarter, I'm noticing very little difference in my paycheck, but the increase in my retirement account is quite nice. Of course I'd like to have more money in there, but the balance is quite nice. As for my situation with debt, it continues to get paid down. I'm tracking that separately over at <a href=' http://www.ncnnetwork.com' >No Credit Needed Network</a>. It feels good to pay it down, so I've taken quite a bit of the money from my side income and put it toward this debt. There is still quite a bit of work to do, but I'm feeling good about it right now. Total net worth for my household is topping 60K right now. http://www.networthiq.com/people/EasyChange

Fortunately, there was a little bit of extra income in my household this past month. This was largely because of the way paychecks fell etc but now here I am trying to figure out whether or not it makes sense to pull the trigger on a major lump sum payment on a credit card (this was transferred debt from a student loan). But now, here I am, stuck because some money has been eaten up (quite literally) in a hurry. 1. Dinners out 2. Unexpected medical expenses 3. Landscaping 4. Birthdays 5. Water bills Of course, some of this stuff was planned for and some of this stuff was actually handled via the normal buffer that is built into the budget. However, where I was quite eager to put a huge chunk down against some of this debt, these expenses, which total over 500 dollars make me somewhat more hesitant. If I decide to pull the trigger anyway, it is probably not that big of a deal. But I will end up using some of the savings to do this deal -- effectively loaning myself the money. And if I c...