Recently a close friend and I discussed a debt she wanted to payoff. She has a car loan with a balance of about $10,000 at an interest rate just north of 5%. It’s killing her that she’s paying interest on it and wants to know if she should pay off the loan with her savings. [...]

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I find the story about Craig Cunningham very intriguing. His debt collection story was featured in Better Off Deadbeat. When credit was free flowing, he borrowed over $100,000 and invested in risky stocks and the sub prime mortgage industry. The greedy extension of a well planned credit card arbitrage strategy. Of course, the recession hit, [...]

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Each January I like to review all of our spending for the prior year. Since I track everything in Microsoft Money (yes, I’m still holding out until the end of the year to convert to Quicken) it’s pretty easy. I look at the average spending and then project what our spending will be for the [...]

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I’m not a big fan of the newsletters that come with all of our account statements in the mail. It seems like a lot of them are purchased from the same vendor and have many repeat articles. There is one exception, however, the Schwab On Investing magazine. It’s one of my favorites. While I was [...]

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After the hoopla from the holidays is over, we turn around and head right into planning a birthday party for my oldest son. It’s one of the drawbacks of having a birthday around the holidays, however it is fun to have another event to see friends and family! Once the party is over next week [...]

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