Debt Stupid

If you really want to understand how Wall Street works and who the real crooks are, do yourself a favor and have a listen to Phil Grande’s Off The Wall Street radio show. He will entertain and crack you up! And the best part is that you will actually learn something you didn’t know about the Ponzi scheme that is Wall Street!

Don’t go there thinking your going to be pampered and told everything is OK with the economy. Phil is a trader and pretty much what he does is teach the art of trading stocks. He doesn’t like fundamentals at all and barks at CNBC and the likes of Jim Cramer! He calls Jim Cramer a clown or the Jerry Springer of the industry. LOL!

He’s not a fan of Hank Paulson either, the current Treasury Secretary under the Bush administration.

According to Phil Grande, Hank Paulson, during is employment at Goldman Sachs, was instrumental in the creation of the subprime instruments that have caused so much chaos in the markets worldwide. And now he is putting together the Hope Now Alliance to help struggling homeowners from the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis! The Ponzi creator to the rescue! LOL!

Try listening from his earlier podcasts, around 3/20/2008, so you can get the full picture on this fiasco.

You aren’t going to get that kind of insight from CNBC!

I am back. Hopefully I will stick around longer this time.

I have been on a roller coaster ride.

I have to admit that I am about a thousand dollars more in debt than I was since I started this blog. It could have been worse, except that I was paying over $1,000 a month towards my debt. So, yes, I have been abusing my credit cards, again. But no matter, I should be making faster progress towards finally bringing down my debt starting this month.

I did shed a few monthly expenses. I got rid of one of my cars, so I only have one now. I am hoping this will change soon. Where I live you just can’t live with a single car. It can breakdown and you wouldn’t have any other alternatives while that one is out of commission. So a second car is a must.

Sadly, my investment will be returned to me sometime this month. I was hoping to continue receiving a monthly passive income form that, but I will just use that money to pay down one of my remaining credit cards and cancel it. Bringing my debt down to something like $12,000+. I can’t wait!

In the future I will be looking into other investment vehicles and see what works for me. I am looking into Forex Managed Accounts for example.

Today on MSNBC, Herb Weisbaum writes an article concerning the continuing abusive practices of the credit card industry. I am not surprised at all that nothing has happened.

Frankly, I doubt that anything will be done. Not until consumers/voters tell their senators (who, in my opinion, have been in power for way too long to have not have protected our interest in this matter by now) that they need to take care of this problem today if they want to remain in that cushy seat for another 6-years.

But who am I kidding? Americans not ignorant on an issue so important to their well being? Ha!

There is a lot going on in my life right now. So I haven’t been posting as much. I need to get cracking and posting a lot more often if I want this blog to have some level of success.

I will be around soon enough to report on the war on my debt, which sadly I think I am not doing so great at lately. I have pushed the front lines a mile only to loose a mile the following week. Basically I haven’t made much progress.

It’s disgusting.

I will be posting a lot more from now on.

Well, it’s official. I have only paid down $492.50 of my total credit card debt.

Pathetic!

I had a plan that was going to see me put a real big dent on my credit card debt. But… life got in the way.

Life always finds a way to crush the best laid plans. Doesn’t it?

Well, at least my net worth has improved and this because I managed to make a second investment before all my current economic problems started. One of my car’s engine busted and the other car which was sitting idle for the past four-years needed body & fender work, as well as many other things, such as new tires. These were over $200.00! The car with the busted engine is going to the junk yard.

And yes, I had to break my rule and put some of these expenses on my credit cards.

In hindsight though, I am glad I was able to make the investment. Things happened after and not before. Which would have meant my net worth would not have improved. And in a few months income generated from my investments will all go to help pay my credit card debt. Well, at least, that’s the plan. But, I do understand now that between now and those mature dates, life can get in the way again. Ugh!

I haven’t been posting much because I have a lot going on right now. Also, not much to report on lowering my debt. I have only managed to pay the minimum on my credit cards this month again due to my car problems. At least I am fixing my other car with cash, which was just sitting idle due to a car crash in 2004.

If you have been reading my blog, then you know my tight situation is because of another investment I recently made. That investment and now the hundreds of dollars of sudden car problems has put me in this tight spot.

If nothing else comes my way, I should sail thru this easily—but tight.

Bad news for me today. It was just one of those days.

First, I went to turn on my LexMark X2500 Scanner/Printer and it would not turn on. I packed it up and took it to WalMart and then after that I went to the post office. I have been noticing a noise with the car for a while now, too, so I decided to take it to my father in-law who is a mechanic. That noise was not the muffler hitting the underside of the car as I was suspecting, but inside the engine!

He told me I was lucky, as that engine could have just locked at any moment leaving me stranded.

That’s life for you. The car has plenty of oil, so I suspected it was the last time it overheated due to a clogged radiator, I had that fixed but it looks like the damage was already done, it was only a matter of time for it to get worse.

Looks like my efforts to bring my debt down a bit more this month took another hit.

Get a second job? Euww! Are you kidding me?

What’s the difference between the rich and the poor? Don’t know? Perhaps you should read some personal finance books. I have read quite a few and they expound the same advice—make money work for you.

That’s right, make money work for you instead of the other way around. I have known about this for quite some time and it’s the way I bought my first house. But I haven’t always, or have had the resources, to follow this great advice.

Since December of 2006, I have had the means to pull ahead using this tool and way of life that the rich use so successfully. It’s called investing, but unlike many rich people, the poor have a lot more to lose percentage wise, which means going bankrupt.

And before any of you out there chime in with a “but a lot of us poor do this already.” No you don’t, I am not talking about investment funds or your company’s 401K. Many of the vehicles I have been using lately are a lot riskier than that and bring in money on a monthly basis.

I have managed to raise my monthly budget to $1,000 a month (in some months a little more) to pay down my credit cards with. But this doesn’t come without risks.

This post was actually prompted because of the many personal finance blogs I read. When it comes to second incomes they always mention getting a second job. To tell you the truth, a second job is not always the best, or optimum, way to raise your income. There are many other ways.

As soon as I feel more comfortable about what I do, I will write in more detail about it.

The good news:

This is my first report on the status of my debt and net worth since I started my debt blog. The good news is that because of my recent investment my net worth improved by $846.41 down to minus $17,096.00.

The bad news:

Because I didn’t pay one of my credit cards this month, due to a balance transfer I wrote about previously, my credit card debt actually went up $164.70, to $20,987.65.

How come my credit card debt actually went up? Because I only made the minimum payment due on the other two cards and, of course, the high interest charges on two of those cards doesn’t help either.

In about 6 months, when the investment that I made matures to the level I want, it will start to generate passive income on a monthly basis. This income will be used to help me craft a bigger budget for paying down my credit cards. Hopefully sooner than the two-years goal I gave myself.

I posted previously that because of the investment I just made that I might not be able to pay the $1,000 I budgeted monthly for credit card payments in July. Well, I took a look at the numbers again, and I just might be able to pay that much in July. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Wish me collective luck! I am going to need it. :)

I recently finished reading Empire of Debt by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin.

I enjoyed this read, not only because of all the history, but because it was an easy read for me. This book will not put you to sleep with a lot of technical statistics, and pie/bar chart data. It really speaks to a layman, like myself, about how much in trouble the United States economy is really in.

One of the passages in the book that has stuck with me is this one:

“America’s impoverishment is even more ridiculous. She is sustained by foreign wealth, but without real money. It is merely paper money without the paper—electronic registration units of paper money. It is a mirage—a chimeric representation of something that doesn’t exist anywhere. For every additional dollar the US Treasury calls into being, there is no extra dollar of savings, no extra dollar of profit, not even the paper dollar itself. At least the gold taken from Latin America is still around today and is still useable. The dollars created by the [US] Treasury are likely to disappear altogether.“

Makes me think, what will happen to those nations, like China, who have been buying treasury bills and becoming the “Real Bank of America,” if the majority of those foreign nations lose faith in the US dollar? I don’t think this is a problem that could hit just the United States of America, it sounds to me like an economic global crisis when it does happen.

Also, just think about the amount of inflation being caused by the above machinations of the US Treasury; the erosion in value of the US dollar.

After reading this book I understand a lot more about the reasons we live in a perpetual rat race, thanks to our very government and the artificial economy created. According to Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin, a US dollar today, in comparison to one in 1913, is worth five cents.

I really do recommend this book.