My Debt Blog

I have watched this website closely for when they would actually release this tool. If you have time go check out Mint.com if you’re curious about their new free online money management tool. I’ll give my experience thus far and probably provide a follow up in a month to see how it is working for me. My backup plan is to continue to keep my Excel spreadsheets updated of course.

Signed up an account and after logon I was taken to the tab to add Accounts. So far I have 8 of them in there and the tool creates a secure connection and gathers your transactions. Then I went to my Overview tab to view the summary. There is a getting started area that lets you see how you could save money (for products they probably endorse which is how they make money), setup alerts to track bill due dates, or look at spending trends. So far so good.

After all the initial setup, I clicked the Transactions tab which basically lumps all your accounts into one big pool. A lot of my transactions have no category and there is some updating that has to be done to teach it what those transactions are for. You can filter the view based on the account you want to look at though, which helps since I track regular transactions on my checking account. Spending Trends tab shows me a neat pie graph of the amounts and percentage of my available cash is being spent in different categories.

Finally their Ways to Save tab is where they make the money through this tool. It suggested I transfer my balance from my 9.9% APR card to a 13% card with a cash back bonus of $110. I think I’ll just avoid the extra finance charges by not doing this. I probably won’t use this tab but I understand why they have put it in there. Overall I think this tool is neat and we’ll see how it goes for a month.

Comments(7)

I guess the full force of my wife not bringing home any income is starting to show itself. Spending habits have not changed and in fact seem to have increased this month. Our EF is almost drained at the moment to the tune of $700 because of all these extra expenses that seem to come up like emergencies.

I’m having a real hard time trying to keep my head above water here trying to manage everything. Last week and this week has been very stressful for me and I haven’t put a lot of thought into where we stand in the financial areas. We really need to stop eating out. Spending is really out of control and something has to be done to get the EF back on track and get through this month. I need my wife to be on board with how we’re going about spending money since paying off debt isn’t working. This is getting too stressful for me to handle on my own.

Our debt is going nowhere because not operating on the income we have. I hope all the bills at least get paid this month to say the least. Pulling money from the EF to avoid hot checks I really don’t like doing. I think our bigger problem is the bulk of our income comes at the later end of the month, but there’s still stuff at the beginning of the month too. Something has to be done to reorganize things so when money gets low the EF doesn’t have to hold things over until the next paycheck.

I am fairly confident that I can get the EF back on track by the end of the month but not certain we won’t continue to run into this situation every month. This student teaching experience is important but not having her income is really putting some real pressure on us. The last thing I want to have happen is turning to the credit cards. This really sucks.

Comments(2)

I’m not sure if it is Wells Fargo’s fault or not, could be trusted USPS, but a payment didn’t make it to the bank. I got a letter this weekend that things are behind so I called them up to take care of it. The collections department isn’t very nice either, but I wasn’t expecting them to be friendly since I appear like a deadbeat to them.

Needless to say I’m fronting some fees that I hope I can get waived since every payment prior to this has posted just fine. There is a concern now that a regular bill payment mailed USPS is not going to make it to the destination. Now more than ever am I wanting to pay everything electronically so I can rest assured my payment is there.

Since I paid it electronically today it will take a few days before my account is brought back current. Unlike issues with credit cards, this one is way more serious and I should of stay on top of these checks not clearing. Can’t always trust the mail these days I guess.

Comments(1)

Here’s a simple video that most college students should probably watch. When you’re only 18 or 19 years old and heading off to college, the credit card companies can’t wait to get you to sign up for their card. On average, most students rack up debt by eating out, buying clothes, and then use the money they do have to pay the minimum on the account. Recent statistics say that 20% of college students graduate with 7k of high interest credit card debt.

I wish I knew what I pretended to own through my credit cards. All I know now is that these things don’t make your life better. If I just used the money I make to buy things, it only costs me what I paid for it and I don’t owe anyone for it. I like owning things rather than hoping I can pay for them. This video is simple but good.

Comments(3)

College is a wonderful thing to go through before going full force into the real world. The issue with a college degree is it never guarantees income. I knew exactly what I wanted to do at the end of high school and went to college to help open the employment doors for me. There are a lot of things I learned in college far beyond what the degree is worth. When you’re done and have that paper in hand, it doesn’t mean you’ll get a job either.

My wife wasn’t sure what she wanted to do in college and switched paths a few times. Then after she graduated there was an opportunity for her to do an internship. Based on the field she was going into, I thought this was a good idea, except it didn’t pay anything. I got a job right out of school and made plenty of income to support the both of us, so it wasn’t a huge problem. After the internship was over, she was not interested in doing that as a career for various reasons. Great, so now what do you want to do with your life?

She ended up getting into a graduate school program in the education field to become a teacher. I was not really involved much in her going to graduate school to pursue this, but I wanted her to find something she would enjoy doing. Now that things are getting to the end of the rope, the amount of student loan debt scares me.

I didn’t know how much exactly she was borrowing, and as it turns out it’s quite a bit. When doctors and lawyers have to take out massive loans, most of the time they can eventually reach an income that will let them manage it. My wife will not be making a huge income, at the most half of what she borrowed, which would make it very difficult to pay off her student loans. Since we are married, income and debt is combined, so we will be paying off these for hopefully only several years. My focus regarding paying off debt is to try and get rid of the credit card debt completely. Once we no longer have those credit card payments to deal with, it will free up extra money to pay down student loans. It will be nice when she gets a salary so we can focus on a mutual goal together.

Comments(8)

I have to pose this question because I was thinking about it. Almost anywhere we go technology has changed things. I almost feel guilty about not having to do some things I used to do.

Online banking seems to be taking hold pretty strong. Very rarely do I ever have to even go into the bank to deposit my paycheck. It is already electronically deposited for me and available to do stuff with right away. When I ordered checks, I only got two boxes because it is getting to the point where checks are not necessary. Electronic draft of the account using the routing and account number is much quicker. The debit card has in a way almost replaced having to use cash, and not resorting to credit. At least I had the advantage of knowing how banking used to be prior to this era.

What is sad is the new Monopoly game coming out with the kid talking about how fast they do things. They’re playing the classic game of Monopoly, the dad lands on a property with a hotel, and instead of handing actual cash over, they just punch numbers in the little machine and swipe a card. Is the kid learning about money or how to swipe the card in the machine? Life is also doing this Visa card version of the game, because Life takes Visa you see.

I remember being a kid and actually saving up money to buy something. Granted $20 is not much money, holding Mr. Jefferson in my hand, buying something I wanted and handing the money over, you do feel the money leaving. Now the kids can have prepaid cards that don’t even look or feel like money. Swipe it through that machine like the adults do and they feel empowered and older. I understand how my Grandma feels about money now because back in her day metal change had a lot more value.

Part of me likes the convenience of paying bills online though. The old method of writing out the check, putting it in the envelope, putting the stamp on there, finding a place to mail it, and waiting a week for it to cash from the account feels so cumbersome to me now. Autopay makes it even worse because you don’t even need to think about paying a bill anymore, it’s just handled for you. I still feel lazy that technology has replaced so much of what I used to do.

Comments(3)

I’m not a fan of paying high interest on credit cards, which is part why I opened a 0% card to transfer. I’m thinking I may need to open something else if I cannot get anywhere with Bank of America. Currently I am at 17.24% which is down from 25.24% when they screwed up a payment because of a Saturday, the computer said it was late, I called them up and got the late fee cleared, but my APR got rocked the next month. I got this rate down a few months ago and decided to call them up again to see if they’ll lower it more.

After a long hold time I got to the first person who cannot do much of anything so they transferred me to an account manager to handle my question. Waiting on an inner hold even longer, I finally got someone to talk to me. Asked them for a lower rate and they told me my rate was the best they could do for me. I told them other companies are giving me offers for 9.9% and lower, but she wouldn’t budge.

So this is where I start to get frustrated and annoyed. I asked them why they won’t lower my rate and they said the rate is based on several factors. They look at the overall balance in relation to credit limit, amount of monthly payments, and how much I use the credit card per billing cycle. She then went on and told me a credit card is a short term loan. By using it I am borrowing money from them at the best rate I can get, but then they expect a payment for that. I told her I don’t like to be lectured on how a credit card works and corrected her that a credit card is a revolving line, not a term loan.

This is where it got real interesting. I told her if I bought $200 in gas per month on my card, then added $200 to my regular payment, would that lower the rate? She told me yes it would! That doesn’t make any sense that I can increase the balance and payment just to get a better rate from Bank of America. I would still be paying down the same amount but they don’t see it like that. It’s not worth fighting with them anymore and I think I’m going to transfer that balance to something else. It will be nice to get my smaller cards paid off so I could really focus on paying these other cards with higher balances off quicker.

Comments(5)