This is a bit of a mind trick but it’s helpful to reduce debt. If your credit card minimum payments are $78, $187, and $365, make them $100, $200, and $400. If your car payment is $210, make it $250 or $300. If your mortgage payment is $879, pay the extra $21 toward principal and … Read more
Guru Suze Orman has gotten flak from Liz Pulliam Weston about her recent about-face on paying down credit card debt. From Ms. Orman: If you have an unpaid credit card balance and not much saved up in emergency savings I need you to listen up. My advice has changed. I want you to only pay … Read more
Liz Pulliam Weston wrote a nice article recently describing nine money priorities. She lists them from top priority on down: Pay your bills Save $500 Start saving for retirement Pay off “toxic” debt Bolster your emergency fund Check out long-term disability insurance Enhance your retirement savings Start saving for college Save for spectacular expenses I … Read more
Five Cent Nickel posted on how to calculate the payback period for a potential mortgage refinance. It’s indeed important to figure this out before paying for a refinance that might never save any money. (There are plenty of ways to blow money that are more fun than going through a mortgage refinance. Trust me!) Nickel … Read more
This Michelle Singletary column on the Washington Post website has answers to a few readers’ questions regarding debt and debt reduction. The first question outlines a situation that stings a bit. Here’s a summary: Husband has less construction work coming in; takes lesser-paying jobs to bring in something. Couple cuts budget but is still short … Read more
The surest way to work toward saving money each month is to reduce debt. Here are some ways to do that …. Being in debt simply means that at one point you borrowed money to fund some purchase, and are now paying it back over time. (For the purpose of this post, I’m not going … Read more
Maybe you’ve heard about the US Federal Debt crossing the $10 trillion mark. This is a huge number. At one point I heard someone say that physicists were better than average about attaching value to really big or really small numbers, so here’s my crack at it. I’ll let you be the judge. $10 trillion … Read more
I felt like we dodged a bullet tonight. I was checking balances on some of my accounts and I loaded up the balance on our primary checking account. I knew it was going to be low. We had had a couple of big expenses (a six-month car insurance premium and a replaced central air system) … Read more