After reading the story of the Credit Terrorist and following the discussion on Would You Walk Away from Your Home? I realized we were sitting on a gold mine. I checked the balances on our credit card arbitrage this morning and they’re currently just over $172,000. It occurred to me, that none of this credit […]
Ever since the credit card act went into law, I’ve had a ton of fun reviewing my credit card statements in the mail. The new table on the statement draws attention to the payoff, ideally encouraging those in debt to pay more than just the minimum to get out of debt. However, for those of […]
Our snow finally melted and we got our first glimpse of spring this week. It always feels good to open the windows and doors and get some fresh air in the house and do some spring cleaning. It’s also a good time to do some spring cleaning in your financial house. Here’s a few financial […]
When Jill wrote about how to fix your credit after a foreclosure, a reader, Marke, left the following comment: I am right now considering whether I should walk right now. Since millions of homeowners are in a situation where their house is worth less than they owe on their mortgage, I’m guessing that Marke isn’t […]
I had lunch with a friend this week, and she told me about a barter exchange that her husband joined. The concept is pretty simple: you provide a service and earn barter credits, then you spend barter credits to purchase services from other businesses. And in a down economy, barter is appealing. My biggest fear […]
We were excited this week to be named a finalist in the 2009 Plutus Awards. My Dollar Plan is a finalist in the category for Best Tax Blog! So far, it’s a fantastic tax season, with the completion of my enrolled agent exams, landing some great new clients for our tax business, and now getting […]
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. […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
