Easy Change

This evening, I decided I would log in and check on my current portfolio of prosper loans. Not long ago, I railed against prosper and now it appears that there is definitely something big going on over at prosper. The message from their website: start of message Prosper Filing Registration Statement; Enters Quiet Period Prosper has started a process to register, with the appropriate securities authorities, promissory notes that may be offered and sold to lenders through our site in the future. Until we complete the registration process, we will not accept new lender registrations or allow new commitments from existing lenders. If you're an existing lender, your current lender agreements will be unaffected; your existing loans will continue to be serviced; you'll be able to track and monitor your loans; and you'll be able to withdraw funds from your Prosper account. If you're a borrower with an existing loan, you will continue with your current borrower agreement and be ...

I'd like to say that this was going to be good news. It isn't. I just found out, on the way home tonight, that my parking as a commuter in the great state of taxachusetts is going to be going up by 40% starting in less than a month. MBTA Increases Already Exorbitant Parking Fees is the link to the web page where they shamelessly announce it. My curiousity gets the better of me though. Do they really think, in this economy, in this recession that it is a good time to charge even more for these services, the services that help people work and actually generate real tax revenue? I'm not completely oblivious; Massachusetts and California were both in extremely dire straits and they needed to get short-term loans at high rates. Details are available at la times website . But in the end, it is not the increases that bother me so much as their size. People can absorb a small increase of a few percent. You adjust your budget, you make small lifestyle changes. However, this change...

One of the more advanced topics in personal finance is the use of credit cards for your own benefit. Some people are involved in applying for credit cards and moving the balances around to get balance transfers. Others are simply using cards that have the best interest rates and reward programs. Now that I am credit card debt free, I have chosen to continue to use a single credit card because I get rewards on the card which can be used later on for higher-education related expenses. So, this is what I have been doing for the past year or so. Every time I buy essential expenses like gasoline or groceries, I buy them with the credit card and pay the balance each month. Recently though, I've become aware that credit cards have resumed their dirty tricks and have started moving around the due dates of the statements. This means that inadvertently, you can miss the payment date and be slammed with late fees and extra interest. So, I decided to fight back. I wanted the rewards but I didn...

You'd have to be living under a rock at this point to be unaware of how scary the situation is with the global economy. That's right, GLOBAL. Even though we like to segment our countries into developing and developed...and give them even fancier names like 'frontier', the reality is that this current situation shows just how coupled all of the world's economies still are. The big concern for many at this point, and many of the government officials is the fact that the credit markets are not yet flowing. Instead, all of the money is being locked up nice and tight at banks and they are not lending. In the end, I am interested in considering prosper and some of the other peer-to-peer lending sites. In the event that these banks do not open up lending, we will be in a severe recession quite fast. But for the average person, there is a genuine concern that there might not be enough money for their boss to get enough cash to make payroll, or that there might not be money...

In the craziness that continues to happen in this economy, it is important to stay focused and remember to review your overall plan. Focusing on this plan is a big part of making sure that you are able to withstand all of the news and panic that is running amok lately. For me, personally, the plan is pretty straightforward and so I figured I'd share it with you. 1. Pay all bills. Not just on time. Early. Period. 2. Never commit to debt that I am not extremely comfortable with paying off in 3 years or less. The only possible exception to this is a mortgage in the event of a move. 3. Continue paying down outstanding debts, focusing mostly on the smallest debt until it is paid down. Personally, I do not focus every free penny on debt paydowns like some personal finance experts advocate doing. I think that the importance of a significant emergency fund is just ignored during these broad statements about debt reduction. 4. Continue building the emergency and freedom funds with approxima...