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Yakezie Beta Chapter Search

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In an effort to promote the crap out of the Yakezie Beta Chapter, I’ve created a search specific to us. This will make it easy to find Beta Challengers to promote.

The current list in the search is:
Live Real, Now

http://www.YourSmartMoneyMoves.com

http://www.providentplan.com

http://knsfinancial.com

The Kitchen Sink

http://meinmillions.blogspot.com/

Passive Family Income

http://www.rentingoutrooms.com

InvestWithPassion.com

http://www.yesiamcheap.com

http://moneygreenlife.com

Buylikebuffett

www.dividendmonk.com

http://SimpleVesting.com

http://www.retireby40.org

The College Investor

ChristianPF.com

http://www.moderntightwad.com

http://untildebtdouspart.blogspot.com/

http://www.blondeandbalanced.com

http://jamesfowlkes.com/

http://www.mightybargainhunter.com

http://www.beatingtheindex.com

http://www.thepassiveincomeearner.com

http://www.prairieecothrifter.com

http://buckinspire.com

http://sustainablepersonalfinance.com/

http://www.toddswanderings.com

Cents To Save

More will be added as I have time to dig through the forums.  If you’re a Beta Challenger and don’t see your name, leave a comment below and I’ll get you added ASAP.

Fixing Your Credit Report

Finance

Sometimes, negative things appear on your credit report.  Usually, they do a good job of maintaining

Credit card (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

accuracy, but mistakes do happen. The creditor or the reporting agency may screw up, or you may have your identity stolen.  If either of these situations are true, you’ll want to correct your credit report, making yourself eligible for lower rates on future credit and, occasionally, lowering the cost of things like auto insurance.

If you throw “credit repair” into Google, you get 18 million hits.   Most of those are either outright scams or hopelessly optimistic about what they can accomplish. As I said once before:

Credit Repair is almost always a scam. There are ways to get correct bad information removed from your credit report.  If the information is correct, those methods are illegal.   There are two legal methods to repair your credit.  First, stop generating bad credit.  Make your payments on time and eventually, the bad items will fall off.   Second, write letters disputing the actual incorrect items on your credit report.  There are no quick fixes, and anybody telling you different is flirting with a jail sentence, possibly yours.

There are ways to avoid the scammers.

  • Avoid advance-fee credit repair. If they are any good, you will pay for results, not intentions.  If they charge beforehand, they are already breaking the law.
  • If they insist they can erase the accurate, but negative information, run away.
  • If they tell you to dispute everything negative, even the accurate information, run away.
  • If they tell you to create a new credit identity, don’t just run, report them.  It’s a felony.

Legally, you cannot get valid information removed from your credit report.  Anyone who tells you differently is advocating a crime. However, according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you are entitled dispute incorrect records.

To verify the accuracy of your credit report, you need to see it.  You can get a free report if your credit is used to deny you for something.  This is known as an “adverse action” .  You have 60 days from the denial to request the report.  You can also get one free report from each of the major credit bureaus each year. I space out these requests so I see my credit report every 4 months.

If there is inaccurate information on your report, dispute it in writing.  Send a letter to the credit bureau that is reporting the error.  Explain the problem and politely demand an investigation.   They will contact the creditor, who usually has 30 days to respond.   In the meantime, send a dispute letter to the creditor, along with proof of the inaccuracy.  If the investigation does not go your way, the creditor will have to report the dispute status to the credit bureaus in the future.

If the negative items are accurate, there is only one way to get it off of your report legally:  Wait.    Most negative information can only be reported for 7 years, while a bankruptcy will be reported for 10.

Another way to build your credit in the face of negative credit is to start building good credit to overshadow the bad. Get a credit card.  Your first credit card from the bottom of the debt-barrel will probably be a gas card or a store-branded credit card.    That’s fine.  The main consideration is are low or nonexistent fees.   Don’t accept application fees, activation fees, fees for carrying a balance or fees for not carrying a balance.    Annual fees are becoming a fact of life, so look for low fees.   The interest rate does not matter.   You will be paying this card off immediately, meaning no less often that every two weeks.  Make sure every penny is paid during the grace period, and make sure your card comes with a grace period.   Some don’t.  Those are bad cards to get.

There are no quick fixes for bad credit, just good new habits and time.

 

ING Direct – 2 Day Sale

Finance, Reviews

Today and tomorrow, ING Direct is having a “Financial Independence Days Sale”.

It’s a good sale. If you open a checking account or Sharebuilder account and you’ll get $76.  Apply for a mortgage and you’ll get $776 off of the closing costs.

I have accounts at 4 different banks.  Two of those were opened for specific debt-reduction purposes.  Of the others, one is used for most of my cash flow and bill payments, and the other is ING.   As of this moment, I have 15 accounts or sub-accounts with ING Direct.

Opening an account is painless and only takes a few minutes.   They are currently offering up to 1.25% in an interest-bearing checking account, though I’ve never qualified for more than .25%.  That account comes with overdraft protection, so you are charged interest instead of overdraft fees.

Once you have your first account set up, sub-accounts can be created in literally seconds.  Why would you want a bunch of sub-accounts?  I have a number of saving goals. Each of these goals has its own account at ING.  I can tell at a glance how much we have saved for our vacation next month and far away we are from affording my son’s braces.   My kids each have an account here because, currently, the interest rate is at 1.1%, which is miles ahead of most traditional banks.   Combined with the convenience of total online control, there’s no contest.

Money transfers are smooth.  I use one of my accounts as a transfer account to get money to and from two separate banks.

I also have a Sharebuilder account.  For those who aren’t familiar with it, it is a stock brokerage with low fees and a low barrier to entry.    If you set up an automatic investment, you get $4 stock trades with no minimum.  I’m not aware of any place cheaper.

That all sounds like a lot of ad copy and the links are affiliate links, but the truth is, I am just that happy with ING. I’ve never had an accounting error, or any problems at all.

The downside? Paper checks are verboten.  They will not accept paper checks, but you do have a check card to use.   You can hit 35,000 ATMS for free withdrawals, but any deposits are held for a few days before you have access to the funds.   It can also take 3-4 days to transfer money from ING to another bank.  I keep enough in the accounts that I’m always spending or transferring older deposits while I wait for the new ones to clear.

Even if you don’t like the bank, get a checking account, use it a few times and get $76 for very little trouble.   Open a Sharebuilder account, buy some stock and collect $76 for it.   Without an automatic payment, it will cost you less than $20 to buy, then sell the stock, netting you $56.

Who doesn’t like free money?

A Moment of Clarity

Finance

Money money money!
Image by Matt Stratton via Flickr

Ten years ago, I buried myself in debt. There was no catastrophic emergency or long-term unemployment, just a series of bad decisions over the course of years.

We bought a (short) series of new cars, a house full of furniture, electronics, hundreds of books and movies, and so much more.   We threw a wedding on credit and financed an addition on our house.   We didn’t gamble or drink it away, we just spent indiscriminately.  We have a ton of stuff to show for it and a peeling credit card to prove it.

What changed?

In October 2007, we found out brat #3 was on the way.    Don’t misunderstand, this was entirely intentional, but our…efficiency caught us by surprise.   It took several years to get #2.   We weren’t expecting #3 to happen in just a couple of weeks.   #2 wasn’t even a year old when we found out she was going to be a big sister.  That’s two kids in diapers and three in daycare at the same time.

The technical term for this is “Oh crap”.

I spent weeks poring over our expenses, trying to find a way to make our ends meet, or at least show up in the same zip code occasionally.

I finally made my first responsible financial decision…ever.   I quit smoking. At that point, I had been smoking a pack a day or more for almost 15 years.   With the latest round of we’re-going-to-raise-the-vice-tax-to-convince-people-to-drop-their-vices-then-panic-when-people-actually-drop-their-because-we-made-them-too-expensive taxes, I was spending at least $60 per week, at least.

Interesting side story: A few years ago, Wisconsin noticed how many Minnesotans were crossing the border for cheap smokes and decided to cash in by raising their cigarette taxes.   The out-of-state market immediately dried up.  Econ 101.

So I quit, saving $250 per month.

Our expenses grew to consume that money, which we were expecting.  (Remember, we were expecting a baby!)   Unfortunately, our habits didn’t change.   We still bought too much, charged too much on our credit cards, and used our overdraft protection account every month.  At 21% interest!

Nothing else changed for another year and a half.  My wife would buy stuff I didn’t like and we’d fight about it.  I’d buy stuff she didn’t like and we’d fight about it.   When we weren’t arguing about it, we’d just silently spend it all as fast as we could.

Bankruptcy was looming. We had $30,000 on our credit cards and our overdraft protection account was almost maxed out.  Have you ever thought you’d have to sell your house quickly?

One day, while I was researching bankruptcy attorneys, I ran across Dave Ramsey.   When I got to daycare that evening to pick up the kids, I noticed they had The Total Money Makeover on the bookshelf, so I asked to borrow it.

I read the book twice, had a very frank discussion with my wife about the possibility of bankruptcy, and we set out on the path to financial freedom together.

What made you decide to handle your finances responsibly?  Or, perhaps more importantly, what’s holding you back?

The Best Financial Advice I Ever Received

Finance

Read through any financial book, newspaper, magazine, or blog and you’ll find no shortage of advice.  It seems everyone has their own opinion on what you should be doing with your money.  One book tells you to invest in real estate.  Another says index funds.  Another says tax liens.

After awhile it can become pretty frustrating trying to figure out what exactly is the best course of action.  If all these experts have different opinions, whose advice do you trust?

Personally, the best financial advice I ever received didn’t come from a financial guru.  It didn’t come from a personal finance book or magazine.  It didn’t come from the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.

It came from my dad.

I was probably about eight or nine years old and I was sitting on the floor playing with my Star Wars action figures while he sat in his chair flipping though a trade magazine.  Out of the blue, he asked me for ideas on what kind of products he could sell for extra income.

Being an 8 year old boy the only things that came to mind were whoopee cushions and magic sets.  But that wasn’t exactly what my dad had in mind.

“Why do you want to sell stuff anyway?” I asked him.

“To make extra money.  Gotta keep food on the table,” he replied.

“But you already have a job.  Just ask for a raise or something if you need more money.”

My dad just shook his head.  And then he sat me down and gave me the best financial advice anyone has ever given me.

“Mike, my boss doesn’t give a damn about me.  He cares about himself and his own job.  If it helps him to have me around then that’s good for me.  But if he decides he’s better off without me, then I’m gone.  That’s the way it is.  It will be the same when you get older and get a job.  You’ve got to look after yourself because no one else is looking out for you.  You can’t rely on your boss, or the government, or anyone else to help you look after your family.  You’ve got to take the bull by the horns and do it yourself.”

Now, my dad wasn’t a financial guru.  In fact he was practically broke when he died.  Several years after we had our talk his company decided they could hire someone younger to do his job for a lot less money and they laid him off.   Several attempts at entrepreneurship failed and he ended up burning through the family savings while racking up debt.

But his words still echo with me today.  I harbor an inherent mistrust of corporate America and the knowledge that no matter how well I perform my job I could be let go without warning if they decide to send my job overseas to India or the Philippines.

But my father’s words also fill me with a need for independence and the need to build multiple streams of income to protect myself against the loss of one.  Without that little speech all those years ago I might not have learned how to make websites to supplement my income.  And I wouldn’t be progressing toward my ultimate plan of quitting my day job so I can focus solely on my own business while having the freedom to spend more time with my family.

Most importantly, I have goals and a plan to reach them.  Without that I would be like so many of my friends who march off to work day after day with no real sense of power or purpose.

What about you?  What was the best financial advice you ever received?

Written by Mike Collins of http://SavingMoneyToday.net

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