Debt Stupid

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Hey, what can I say? I want to win this item so I wrote about it. And it doesn’t hurt that I am making you aware of John Chow. He’s got plenty of great articles and ideas to help you make money online!

Well, I am still waiting to make another move towards improving both my networth and my debt. In the mean time, I keep on living…

One of the rules I gave myself when I made the decision to blog about my finances was to try and remain as anonymous as I possibly could. One of the reason being that I hope that my credit card companies/banks don’t penalize me for being so negatively outspoken. Having said that, I will give a clue as to where I live.

I am an American citizen and I live on an island.

That’s about as much as I am going to say. And the reason for that is so you can get a better feel as to where I am coming from in some of my posts. Case in point is one of my recent posts where I talked bout a $120 fee for depositing an international check in one of the local banks. This could be one of the potential reasons for the $120.00 fee. Although with today’s digital world it still seems outrages.

And it will also make sense now that I will post about the weather and how this is murder on my finances. You see, the hotter it gets the more I use my air conditioner to keep my computers and myself happy in this awful weather—well, awful weather for my finances, not necessarily for the beach bunnies.

The hottest months of the year here are from May to October. This is when I can expect my electric bill to sky rocket just on the air conditioner alone, not to mention the many fans around the house.

I guess this is the reverse of when I lived in the states, where the gas for heating during winter would be the most expensive months. We had more cold months in the states than I have hotter months here on the island.

In any case, I hope you are having a fabulous summer wherever you are!

And don’t forget the longest days are just around the corner, summer solstice, they can start on June 20th and end around July 2nd; depending on where you live!

I am playing a waiting game right now, so there is not much for me to report. Been busy as well, which is good.

As I posted before, I am working on another investment and bringing my networth up a bit. I am actually using these investments to help me pay down my debt, so this will help a lot down the road. I am sacrificing lowering my debt now by $1,000 for the sake of another monthly income to help me bring my debt down faster in the future. Remember that my goal is to be debt free in two years.

In the mean time I have been reading other debt blogs and I see that some people are struggling with marriage and debt, and others are making great deals to bring their debt and interest rates down as well.

There’s a flood of foreclosures coming — about 1.1 million!

According to the article:

You have a 1-in-3 chance of losing your house to foreclosure if you got an adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, in 2004 through 2006 that had an initial teaser rate of less than 4%.

If you got a subprime ARM in that period, you started out with a higher rate, and that puts you at less risk. You have a 1-in-8 chance of losing your home.

Suddenly I don’t feel extremely bad about my credit card debt. Just bad. After all, my credit card debt is unsecured. No one will be able to wrestle my house away from me if I ever default on this debt. Which, I will do everything within my power not to!

I just came to the realization that I have a lot less to loose than someone who is about to loose their house.

I have never been thru a foreclosure and to tell you the truth I don’t have any one close to me to ever have either. So I can’t personally imagine what a gut wrenching ordeal it must be. I did have an uncle who walked away from a house because the neighborhood got so bad he couldn’t live there anymore for fear of his life, but that was a decision he took. The neighborhood and the house depreciated so much that it wasn’t even worth selling the house.

I have to alter my plans for this month as I will be using some money to invest. The money that I make from the investment will help me a lot more in the next few months than just dumping it all into my credit card. So I will not be making a payment in the $600.00 range this month to my Washington Mutual (Providian) credit card.

This, of course, will help my networth a little, too.

I have not yet made up my mind as to how much more than the minimum I will pay, or if I pay at all as I did a balance transfer from this credit card earlier this month.

Decisions… decisions….

Hi all,

This is a quick post that I am writing using the new Windows Live Writer from Microsoft.

I installed it with some trepidation as this beta 2 software has two major flaws.

Problem 1: Writer Installation Fails

Symptoms

When trying to install Writer, the installation silently fails and does not complete or appears to take a very long time.

Problem 2: System hangs when running Writer

Symptom

For some users, starting Windows Live Writer causes the computer to become unresponsive. In Task Manager, the Processes tab shows that a svchost.exe process is using close to 100% of the CPU. (Note: Task Manager may not be able to start once the computer becomes unresponsive, so it would be necessary to start Task Manager before starting Writer).

Both have solutions that are available at the Windows Live Writer Blog.

Luckily I seem to be immune to these two problems. The writer seems to be very responsive as I type and can even flash words I misspell (that is always a handy feature). I also included a picture just to see how I can position and manipulate it.

I posted this post as draft and then changed the image border from a Photopaper to Drop Shadow and the changes were made without fuss as I finally published this post. There are a like of features and options to Windows Live Writer so I can’t go over all of them. I do however like the way I can configure it up for multiple blogs—not just one.

I can tell I am going to like this editor a lot more than Wordpress’ online editor.

I have to hand it to the Internet. It is the greatest medium ever created! So much so that a local peasant such as myself can do business over this great medium with other peasants around the world! Even look for bargains!

I was recently reminded of a banking incidence of mine I like to call the “$120.00 Fiasco.”

I opened a new local bank account to be able to deposit checks because I could no longer receive international direct deposits. So I decided the next best thing was to receive checks instead and deposit them locally so that they cleared faster and I didn’t have to mail them again to my online Internet bank once I received them—that process would have taken too long.

Keep in mind that these checks are drawn in US funds.

On my first visit to the local bank to open the account, I was offered coffee and donuts from the bank officer who attended to me. I thought to myself this is nice. I thankfully refused and then proceeded to hand her one of the international checks I would be receiving and after a few quick phone calls she said they could handle them but that she couldn’t tell me on the spot how much they would charge to cash (deposit) them. My online bank doesn’t charge me a dime to deposit these same checks. It is at this point, as I stared at her, I said to myself, well they can’t charge a whole lot of money, so I said “let’s try this one first.” A stupid move on my part, I grant you that. Always find out what services can cost you upfront.

With that she took my info and had me sign all sorts of documents because these were international checks. Every time I were to deposit one I had to go thru this she said, thanks to Homeland Security. Not with my online bank, but whatever.

After around three weeks I get the bad news when I looked at the bank balance. I noticed it just wasn’t balancing out. To the tune of over $100 dollars. The check was $500.00 and I was confused to say the least. I gave the bank a call and spoke to the person who took care of me the first time and she gave me the most unbelievable news. They had charged me $120 to cash my check! I could not do anything to get that money back because I had already signed agreeing to the terms.

In my view local banks are the worst kind of bank. My online bank doesn’t charge me any fees and I just have a checking account, not even a savings account, and the interest is a lot better. I can ride my checking account all the way down to zero and I will not get hit with a fee. Try that with one of my local banks without getting hit with a monthly fee for having no money!

In the end I opted to stick with my online bank and receive my money via wire transfer, the fee is five times cheaper than what my local bank hit me with.

I have to bitterly consider the $120.00 part of the cost of my education to becoming debt savvy! Work with me here, please. I should have taken the coffee and donuts.

Of course, this problem is a symptom of a bigger dilemma—that of living paycheck to paycheck. I am working on rectifying that.

Local banks versus online banks? No contest!

I was perusing Google news when I came upon the article Your Credit Card Company is Playing Evil Tricks on You at the American Chronicle website.

Although I had not seen my credit report history for over two years, this seems to be another reason for why one should. I did, eventually, go over mine about two months ago. I need to make it a habit!

Mr. Stephen Snyder found out why his wife’s FICO score didn’t make sense to him:

There it was…two of her credit card lenders were reporting her “highest balances” as her credit limits. Highest balance is defined as: the highest balance you’ve ever had on that specific credit card.

Some good news.

The $1,500 I wrote about left my 28% credit card and headed over to the one with the 9.25% interest rate and I still have not made this month’s payment, which should be $600. Yeehaw!

Can you tell I’m excited?

My First Command Bank credit card does not apply a higher interest rate to cash advances, balance transfers, etc. It’s just one interest rate on the entire total. Also, this credit card does not have balance transfer fees, over limit fees or late charges (of course, I am willing to bet that abusers would change the bank’s attitude in a second).

This is the perfect credit card for me and it will be the one I will ultimately keep. Predatory banks like Washington Mutual and Providian (which Washington Mutual bought out) can kiss my ass when it comes to my business in the future.

Even if I loose points from my FICO score, nothing will stop me from getting rid of those two credit cards!

I joined the No Credit Needed Network and now have a pie chart updating my debt reduction progress. Although, as you will see when you visit the link you will not see a pie chart just yet, you will when I submit my first update.

The No Credit Needed Network is a network of like-minded people who have decided to share their personal finance goals with the world.