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Posted
Jul 02 2008, 07:57 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. You are going to be fired from your job this Friday. Read that statement again. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine if that sentence were true in your own life. Would you be ready?
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Posted
Jun 20 2008, 06:08 AM
by
Karen Datko
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Almost every day, people write to me with intimate details about their debt situations. Some of them are pretty mild and can be taken care of easily with a little bit of elbow grease. Others are horrifying and will take some very serious attention to manage. In either situation, the principles for getting rid of debt are much the same. Similar tactics can be applied whether the debt is a $200 credit card balance or a mountain of $250,000 worth of various forms of debt.
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Posted
Jun 17 2008, 11:19 AM
by
Karen Datko
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Here's a little snapshot of reality we never thought we'd see: MP Dunleavey owns fewer pairs of jeans than we do. (She has one; we have two.) That factlet about the often loved, sometimes maligned New York Times and MSN Money personal-finance writer was contained in an e-mail interview she did with U.S. News & World Report. We've been among those who have sometimes wondered about MP's spending choices, particularly when she bought a larger house, but that wardrobe confession compelled us to give her another look.
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Posted
Jun 11 2008, 03:03 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Sometimes a good way to learn is to examine other people's mistakes. Lately, personal-finance bloggers have written about two doozies. "Mrs. Accountability" at Out of Debt Again tells the story of Nancy, a woman she met about six years ago when both were poor and living in a trailer park. Nancy's life changed when her mother died. The will specified that some of the estate be used to buy Nancy a condo free and clear.
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Posted
Jun 09 2008, 02:53 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Those who are serious about paying down debt have crafted their own little devices and mind games. For instance, we use the money we earn from our pet-sitting business to make extra payments on our mortgage principal. FloridaChic was born with a shopping gene, but she's learned to channel that impulse to pay off credit card debt. She explains her mind game in a post at Debt Smack called "The lazy girl's guide to snowflaking." This blogger might think she's lazy, but she has serious mind control.
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Posted
Jun 02 2008, 05:37 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly. I pulled out my camera gear last night. It's been two years since I used it regularly. Before I started Get Rich Slowly, I seriously considered trying to become a professional photographer. But for a long time now, my camera stuff has been gathering dust in the corner of my office. I can't even remember the last time I used it. It's fun to look at all my equipment again. It's fun to handle it, to imagine the possibilities. I'm eager to get outside and make some images. As I sorted through my bodies and lenses, though, I had to shake my head.
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Posted
May 30 2008, 01:34 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Tell us, Kristy, what do you really think of Dave Ramsey and his debt snowball? "My opinion of Dave Ramsey is that he's horrible with math and probably not so good at psychology, either," Kristy writes at Master Your Card. Wow. Strong words about many people's favorite financial guru. Of the snowball, she says, "I don't think it makes good financial sense to teach people a method that costs them more money just because it may make them feel better." (In some parts, them's probably fightin' words.)
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Posted
May 18 2008, 08:45 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly. Recent research at the Stanford Graduate School of Business suggests that shopping can lead to more shopping. When such savvy marketing researchers as Uzma Khan of Stanford, Ravi Dhar of Yale, and Joel Huber of Duke noticed that shopping sometimes proceeded unchecked even in their own private domains, they decided to get to the bottom of things. Setting up a series of tests of purchasing behavior, they found that for most people buying that fateful first -- and often innocent -- item seems to open the purchasing floodgates. This realization, they say, has important implications for how stores are laid out as well as for understanding individual behavior. These researchers indicate that shopping is a two-stage process.
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Posted
May 13 2008, 01:30 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Choosing to eliminate debt isn't simply a matter of spending less, "Finally Frugal" has found. You may have to deal with a lack of support from loved ones. We're sorry to hear that her family's response to her new goal "was one of ridicule and disbelief." You also have to identify and confront the demons that have made you spend more than you earn. In her case, the demon is envy. In a thoughtful essay, Finally Frugal provides some detailed solutions for overcoming her insecurity.
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Posted
May 07 2008, 11:02 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
"Dividend" has been using the snowball approach to debt reduction. To do so, the reader treats debt reduction payments as a monthly bill, "as necessary and unavoidable as paying rent."
Dividend started by creating a minimalist yet realistic budget to live on. This includes predictable expenses such as car insurance, gift-giving and "a little bit of play money." Everything left over is officially invisible. "I treat that money like it doesn't exist until the end of the month. Then, out of that, I pay minimums on everything first, and then the remainder gets paid to the next item in the snowball."
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