Managing Debt By Eliminating It

Having your own home is a very important milestone in anyone’s life, and it’s a decision that requires careful planning because not only does it cost a lot, but it’s also a place where you’ll live and reflect your style the most.

Gather around the most important people in your life because having other opinions may improve the decision making process for determining the type of home you can afford. Remember: if their opinions really matter, be sure that you listen to what they have to say.

1. Know Your Budget
How much is in your savings account ? How much of it are you able to afford and comfortable with spending for your dream house? Do you have any assets in your name? If yes, are you willing to sell any of these to increase your budget for home purchase or construction? If not, start saving for your down payment.

Are you comfortable with taking a loan? Obtaining one will greatly increase your budget, but of course that depends if you have someone to borrow funds from in the first place. Do you think any of your relatives or friends will be willing to lend you money at ideal rates?

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If you know enough about student loans or are quite comfortable with the topic and research is not a problem for you iFreelance.com has an open project for those who want to bid for a blogging job.

Here are the details of the blogging job requirements:

500 words per blog.
3 blog posts per week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on an ongoing basis.
$50 per week for all 3 blogs.

Should contain between 500 ? 700 words.
?Voice/language should be conservative, adhering to the AP Style, while remaining conversational but not too casual. (please review blog to get a better idea of this: http://www.nextstudent.com/student%2Dloan%2Dblog/blogs/sample%5Fweblog/
?The voice, flow, sentence structure should be similar to the previous blog entries.
?Blog entries will essentially be citing and summarizing recent articles from the Inside Higher Ed Web site at www.insidehighered.com/news.
?Please stay away from controversial topics of any nature, especially negative news about the student loan industry and scandals relating to specific colleges, religious issues, topics critisizing specific universities, etc.
?Article must have one headline and two or more ?sub-heads.?
?Monday and Wednesdays are more ?newsy? type pieces, whereas Fridays are articles related to ?campus life? or more fun, relevant and timely blogs, pertinent to the college crowd.
?Please submit a couple paragraphs describing how you will compose the blogs in which you will summarize/report on www.insidehighered.com/news in the NextStudent blog before generating the content.

The ways to save money on utility bills are endless so the moment you think you’ve saved as much as possible is also the moment you’re losing an opportunity to save more.

1. Post Reminders
Just because all the members of your home are aware of the need to save money on utility bills doesn’t mean that they’ll know how to do so much less remember to do it all the time. It also doesn’t mean that they don’t care, but since they’re not the ones managing the budget, saving money on utility bills will definitely not be their first priority.

2. All about Control
As much as possible, purchase and use lighting fixtures, electrical appliances, and any other object which uses electricity as a source of power that offers you manual control for its settings. Today’s newest batch of television sets, for instance, allows you to manually configure video and audio settings so you can reduce electricity consumption. The same can be said for light dimmers and even water heaters with temperature control.

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Here are the highlights of the past two weeks of money blogging.

200k as Retirement Fund for the Last 30 Years of My Life

Binary Dollar posted an open mic discussion about How Much Money Does One Need to Retire. When I have read the comments just a few hours ago, I’ve noticed that many responded that they need millions of dollars to retire comfortably.

Eliminating Credit Card Debt: Avoid Promo Pitfalls

According to survey, 80% of US households hold at least one credit card. An average American earner, has 8 credit cards on his wallet, all accumulating interests and debts! It has also been found out that only 2% of credit card holders pay their entire bill each month. $574 billion are accrued as interest for all carried over debt per month! Well, it’s not easy to own 1 card, all the more managing 8 credit cards!

Top 10 High Yield Savings Accounts

If you are looking for a list of high yield savings accounts, eMoneyCentral has a frequently updated list. High yield savings accounts are the best if you are looking for an account that will earn you most interest over time. Emergency funds and down payment savings are best placed in these bank accounts.

List of Credit Card Companies with Zero Fee Balance Transfers

Tired of your old credit card’s high interest rates and annual fees? Why not transfer your balance to another credit card, one that offers better interest rates and zero fee balance transfers? You get to enjoy the same privileges of having a credit card but can rest easy at night knowing your interest rates aren’t draining money away from your pocket. Here are some of the credit card companies that offer zero fee balance transfers you might want to get in touch with.

Double My Emergency Fund Challenge Week 6 Results Mission Accomplished

As predicted on my Week 5 results, I was able to double my emergency fund as early as on the first week of June. I received the $200 payout from my two new blogs. Here are the figures:

Does this look familiar?

If so, I’ve got two words for you - read this.

[image from PostSecret]

A new online financial management application aims to help people who’d like to track their expenses easily - Expensr.

You can fill in your every penny you spend and what have you spent it on to come up with a pie chart that will help you in analyzing (Category Analysis) where your money goes. You can even import bank data to your Expensr account to easily record bank transactions.

Signing up for an Expensr account was a breeze. If you’d like to learn more about it, here is a demo of this financial management tool.

Tags: Expensr, track expenses

For financial management gurus out there, who knows a thing or two about money matters from theories or straight from their own financial experiences, you might want to share some no-nonsense money advice on how to handle the following problems:

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits ask the readers about their Best Advice for Getting Out of Debt.

Julie Rains of WiseBread invites everyone to share their Worst Financial Mistakes

SavingAdvice wishes to save a reader from a gift-giving dilemma and asks the readers to share tips on How to Choose Appropriate Gifts that Won’t Need You to Break the Bank.

[image from kowchow]

Tags: money question, choosing gifts, mistake, debt

Find a zero percent or lower interest rate credit card where you can transfer your balance. By the time the debt is safely owed by another credit company, a new grace period will be charged less or even zero interest. This can thus be a sane move when you are faced with large credit card debt. Balance transfer on credit card is available to anyone who has a social security number and a mailbox.

Balance transfer is actually one of the many strategies that a savvy consumer does to reduce his credit card debt. It can free you from paying all the balances and interests incurred from an old card. Using this technique, you can open new accounts which offer transfer of balance when an old one expires.

However, credit card balance transfer will always be dependent on your credit worthiness. Your ability to pay additional charges will be screened and gauge. If you’re planning to apply for a balance transfer, be sure that your old account will be closed immediately. Usually, acquiring two credit card accounts damage your credit scores.

Keep in mind also that balance transfer requires diligence. Be cautious of the hidden charges attached and certain percentages charged for the transferred balance. See to it that the banks do not charge high joining or annual fees. Do not let them ever take the upper hand in your balance transfer.

[image from painet01]

Tags: balance transfer, zero percent balance transfer, credit card

After the emergency fund challenge, which was very successful in motivating me to become more well-disciplined in handling my finances and in being more productive with my time for the benefit of my finances, I’m launching another money challenge for myself, the Zero Credit Card Debt Challenge.

I am in the process of eliminating credit card debt chunk by chunk every month. The money I owe amounts to an approximate of $850. Why didn’t I use my emergency fund to get rid of this credit card debt? The reason’s here.

How do I plan to finish paying off all of that $850 and how much time am I giving myself? Same way as how I earned money for my emergency fund challenge - being thrifty and getting jobs for extra income. Those two are the methods that I found to be very effective, especially the extra job thing, so why not just rinse and repeat, right? However, this time I’m giving myself three months to come up with that extra $850. An extra $850 may not be that much of a money for you, but it is for me mainly because as I’ve mentioned on my response on a comment on the post about why I’m only needing $200k for my retirement fund, one dollar gets multiplied to about 45 times in my country - Philippines. So this should be a big feat if I accomplish it.

Join me?

Tags: credit card debt, debt challenge, pay debt

I joined a personal finance carnival which was hosted by Getting Green.

Here are the money advice gems I’ve found:

10 Ways to Find Hidden Cash in Your Budget

Could Your Family Live on One Income

Personal Finance Advice Young People Don’t Want to Hear

There are still many of ‘em financial management tips if you’d like to read more. Here is the complete list of money articles that made it to the minimalist edition.