Net Worth
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Archive results for “June of 2007”
On this page you will find the search results for the search term that you queried.
There is a dramatic upswing in people finding my site by searching “blogging away debt.” I received a tip that my blog was mentioned on NPR this morning. For those stopping by…Welcome. And for all of my regular readers, you know I always welcome you too 
UPDATE: Here’s a link to the NPR Story.
This blog is basically the journey of our family to eliminate our credit card debt and get our financial house in order. I’ve been blogging about it since February 2006 and there have been good times, as well as bad times. This blog provides a great deal of motivation to me, and I love the interaction with readers through the comments or emails. In turn, I hope reading about our story can help others.
If you like what you see here, there’s a few ways you can keep updated. You can bookmark this site to visit again, or if you have a feed reader you can Subcribe to my Full Feed. If you have an email address, you can also Subscribe via Email. Every day that I post you will receive one email with the posts that I wrote for that day.
As for where to start, here’s a recap of 2006:
A Reflective Look Back at 2006 - Goodbye to $13,000 of our Debt
And here’s something I wrote that highlights my frugal posts of 2006:
Thanks again for stopping by. I hope you enjoy your stay
On Monday, the Carnival of Personal Finance will be here and there will be a lot of reading! So far, there are well over 30 submissions.
I know I usually highlight a few posts on Friday, but since it will be pretty busy here on Monday, I only picked one that I really enjoyed.
Michael from Money Musings was inspired by my personal finance interviews with my son (first one & second one) and had a little interview with his 4 year old daughter.
Very cute
If you are subscribed to my feed, I apologize for the weird things that may be going on. There appears to be a problem with my feed and I’m trying a few things to fix it. I activated something just now and some old posts are now showing up in my feed reader.
You may see more of that in the next few days as I try to pinpoint the problem. As always, I thank you for your patience.
We rarely use cash and instead we use our debit cards for everyday purchases. We still have one credit card (that we pay in full a few days after using) for internet and recurring charges. I like to have everything electronic, but something that happened today (well, yesterday now) gave me the creeps.
I returned an item to Walmart today and the woman asked if I wanted the credit back on my card. I said yes. I was ready to get my card out of my wallet when all of a sudden I noticed the receipt for the refund printing.
Wait a minute…you mean my card information is stored within that barcode on the receipt? Maybe I’m over reacting, but that freaked me out. I’ve always had to present my card for refunds. Walmart having my card information stored on the receipt like that makes me very uncomfortable.
My particular debit card does have a protection policy on it for unauthorized charges. I have read that it could take days to straighten everything out and get funds put back in an account if something like that happened. That would be devistating to me with the automatic drafts I have. I get chills just thinking about it.
In the past, I’ve briefly thought about only using our one credit card for all purchases so we can receive cash back bonuses. I decided against it because I was concerned that our spending could get out of hand. I think I may revisit that decision and see if there is a way we could make it work. Or perhaps I could look into other alternatives.
I’ve exchanged a few emails with Rob in Madrid. He’s left some great comments on here, and he mentioned a question in one of his emails that struck a chord with me. He was gracious enough to allow me to share this question with all of you.
Why do we struggle when we are forced into frugality?
Think about it for a moment. If you are in debt, you got that way by spending more than you make. For the purpose of this argument, let’s say you were living on 125% of your income.
At some point, the debt payments become too much and you are forced to cut expenses to make ends meet and to start paying off your debt. You are essentially spending less than you make and as an example, you are now living on 80% of your income.
You have 20% of your income that you are now using towards your debt. But wait a minute. You could have been living on 80% of your income the entire time instead of the 125% and accumulating debt?
For me, it’s been eye opening as to how much we have been able to pay on our debt. Once our debt is paid off, that is all money that we technically could be saving if we continue living on 80% of our income. But will it happen?
It was definitely a struggle to get to that point of frugal living. Why did we fight it so much and why didn’t we live that way sooner and avoid debt? Why is there such a struggle?
Thoughts?
I was notified yesterday that I was selected to host the next Carnival of Personal Finance. This carnival is by far the biggest finance-related carnival and it will be here next week.
If you are a blogger, feel free to submit your best personal finance related article from this week here. Make sure you note the submission guidelines.
I’m brainstorming ways to make this an interesting carnival. With submissions easily in the 70+ range I’m trying to think of a way to present the information (to make it easy to navigate) as well as make it interesting.
For those that read the carnivals, do you have any suggestions?
I’m in a rut at the moment. I think part of it has to do with having to spend a lot of money last week. I have a problem with parting with large sums of money when it’s not going towards our savings or our debt.
Probably another reason is because I am again nursing an injury. So I am experiencing a rut with my exercising as well.
Throw in some female hormones and you have someone who doesn’t want to think about finances at all right now. Thank goodness I know we have money in the account (yay to payday!) and I don’t have any bills that I have to pay until the first of the month. I can set things on auto-pilot for a little bit.
So, this week I probably won’t talk much about our finances unless my mood perks up. Instead, I will probably initiate some conversations about finance in general. It’s always interesting to hear others’ viewpoints on subjects.
As a reader, if you ever have something you want bring up to discuss on here, feel free to contact me and share your story. I always welcome the stories of others.
Now it’s time to go to bed. Lack of sleep lately is another thing that probably isn’t helping my rut.
About This Site
Credit Card Debt
- Starting = $37,614
- Paid Off = $28,616
- Current = $8,998
- $25 ING Savings Bonus
Savings Account
- Current = $3,203
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