Archive results for “August 2007f 2007”
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I’ve been hosting ING Orange Savings Account referral links for a while. To start up an online savings account with ING using one of those referrals, you get a $25 bonus and I make $10 (although at the moment the $10 bonus is going to the others that I am hosting referral links for).
A little while ago, ING started offering referral links for their Electric Orange accounts (note, this link is not a referral link and you will not receive a bonus if you use it). It is basically a checking account through ING where you can earn some interest on your balance. It seems like a great deal and I’ve been tempted to go for it…but at this time I’m not ready to add another account to our financial life. Perhaps once a few more of our debts are paid off and I have less to track I’ll consider it.
That said, since I don’t have an account, I never thought of offering the referrals for the Electric Orange account on here. But I was contacted by someone who wanted a link. That’s why I decided to write this post.
If you are interested in opening an Electric Orange checking account with ING, you can earn a $25 bonus if you open the account with at least $250 and use a referral link. By using the link, I earn a $10 bonus. Another important this to note is that you must be a brand new customer to ING to get the bonus. You can’t already have a savings account and get a bonus for opening a checking account.
If interested, please contact me and ask for an “ING Electric Orange Checking Account Referral.” I no longer have these referrals.
Please note…these referrals ONLY work if you are a NEW ING customer. If you are already an ING customer and want to open up an Electric Orange account, please do not use these referral links. Go directly to the ING website.
I’ve been blogging about my debt for over a year and a half now. This really amazes me because while I can be bull-headed and full of determination, it seems to come in spurts. I’m not always a determined person for the long haul (check out my rant at Blogging Away Fat). For some reason, though, I’ve been able to stick with paying off our debt.
But I get so sick of it sometimes. I go through periods where I’m ready to win the lottery (even though I don’t really play). Or I have some big idea that pops in my head and I see dollar signs (although it’s probably just a crazy idea).
Just something that can take my debt and make it go bye-bye. *POOF* All gone. Then I return to reality and I start asking myself questions:
If I don’t go through this long, difficult journey of paying off our debt, what will I learn?
If my debt magically disappeared shortly after starting this blog, would I have still adapted a frugal lifestyle?
Would I even have a savings account?
So many questions that I will never know the answer to. But something tells me that if my debt magically disappeared back then, I would be back in debt before I knew it. Why? Because by going through the process of paying off our debt I am learning so much and I am really understanding how much being in debt has cost us. Not only in the interest that has been paid, but how much stress that it causes.
Yeah, I still get sick of being in debt but it is for a reason. It’s so I will never…ever…get back into it again!
I remember way back when I first started blogging about our debt. I was contacted by a debt company that deals with debt settlement. I asked the gentleman who contacted me flat out…what will happen to my credit score if I did this?
He skirted around the issue a bit, and basically said, “What do you need a credit score for anyway?”
Thinking about it a little bit, maybe he had a point. If you want to avoid debt and obtaining new debt, who cares about your credit score? Go ahead and tank it since you won’t be trying to obtain new credit.
But wait a minute. Some employers pull credit reports on potential employees.
“…most people also don’t know that cellphone companies, landlords, and home insurers often use the scores as part of customer background checks.”
[Via USNews.com]
Somehow, having a good credit score has been linked with having good personal responsibility. Since you have a good score, you are a good person. Of course, I don’t buy that for a minute. A number like that can only tell you so much. But companies outside the financial district are using it to judge you. That upsets me more than a little bit.
I told the gentleman with the debt settlement company that I wasn’t interested. Debt settlement wasn’t an option for me at that point. We are able to pay off our debt, given some time to do it. Now, if we were facing bankruptcy versus going with a debt settlement company…that would have been a different story.
Since it seems like the number of businesses/companies using your credit score as a type of background check is increasing, I wonder what the future will hold for credit scores. I personally hope the importance of credit scores decreases outside of the financial industry.
Remember how I said I was suffering from high speed internet withdrawal? Well, it was because I was out of town. It’s so hard sometimes because I want to share with everyone what is going on (and in this case how much money we were spending), but I have to stop myself. It’s probably not the best thing to declare publicly that our home is vacant so I hope you understand why I haven’t said anything until now.
We went on a journey to visit our parents. It’s a good ten or eleven hour drive for us. Needless to say, I am exhausted after the drive back and from being busy visiting with everyone. But it was very nice because I only see family about once a year, sometimes more if someone comes to visit us.
This time, we did things a little bit differently. Since we are on a “no spending to get stuff” kick, we bypassed buying trinkets and ended up spending some money for experiences. By that, I mean things like going on a boat ride and going up to the top of a very high tower where I experienced an almost paralyzing fear (more about that later).
I still haven’t tallied all of the travel damage yet, but I don’t think it will be too bad. We did spend one night in a hotel and of course there is the money for gas and food while traveling. We also took the opportunity to buy my husband some new shoes because we were in a big city for part of our trip. The stores around me don’t like to carry his size and the shoes he was wearing had a dime-sized hole right in the bottom of the sole. I’ve never seen someone do that before with a pair of shoes.
As a plus, I did get a huge garbage bag of hand-me-down clothes for my son from my sister-in-law. They will fit my son in a year or so. That was very kind of her to give those to us because it will save us a bit of money.
To be able to visit with my family, well, the trip was worth every penny we spent. I’m looking forward to being debt-free so perhaps we can visit more often than once a year. That’s something else I can hold onto to help keep us motivated.
Our local news had a story on cramming because some residents have been affected by it. Cramming? I had no idea that something like this existed.
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), cramming refers to unauthorized charges that may appear on your telephone bill. In a nutshell, a company gets your phone company to charge you for services that you did not use. It could be a one-time charge or recurring charges.
A few examples of cramming schemes:
1-800 numbers – You call for a free service and end up getting billed. The numbers you see on late at night come to mind (like the ones for psychic readings). You are supposed to get something for free, but instead they bill you.
Contest Entries – Someone has a contest and asks for your telephone number. They use that to bill you for services that you never received and there’s no prize. In the fine print on the entry form, you may be giving permission for the charges! I had no idea something like this could happen.
I admit, I don’t look at my telephone bill that closely. I scan it and toss it into the pile. The FTC recommends carefully reviewing your bill for fraudulent charges. If you happen to find something, try contacting your telephone company first via telephone and then following up with a letter. You should also consider contacting your Attorney General’s office.
For more information, including more cramming schemes, you can read the entire article at the FTC website. I’m never quite sure how much I can reprint here, so to be safe I’ll link to the article.
Kansascity.com has an article that features a couple in debt. This one is a little different from most that I read because this couple moved from a higher cost of living area (in California) and moved to a lower cost of living area, Kansas City.
Heather (26) and John Franklin (24) will shortly be making about $65,000 a year (they recently had some job changes). This amount reflects what they will make after retirement contributions and employee benefits. Even with that income, they need an additional $4,500 a year to meet their required debt payments.
Here’s how their debt is spread out:
Credit Cards – $15,830
Other Personal Loans – $5,715
Medical Bills – $3,150
Auto Loans – $23,000
Student Loans – $34,500
Mortgage – $126,230Via KansasCity.com
The Franklins received some help from Ann Case, a Certified Financial Planner. A few of the key points she told the Franklins to work on was to lower their withholding amounts increase their withholding allowances so they have more money to work with throughout the year versus a large refund at the end and to cut their expenses.
I wish the article went into a little more detail about what the Franklins will be doing to reduce their expenses and pay their debt. It would be nice if there was a follow-up on them a year later to see how they are doing. Sort of like how Oprah has done before with her Debt Diet series. In any case, I wish the Franklins well. It’s a long and difficult road but from what I hear (and what I believe), it will be worth it.
Hat Tip to Boston Gal’s Open Wallet for the story.
I have missed having high speed internet the last few days so much. I’m normally a person with a lot of patience (many people tell me that all the time). But put me in front of a computer with an internet speed that crawls and I go crazy. Now that I am back online at the normal speed, I was able to grab a few posts to highlight this week and I can get back to regular posting.
Debtspiration shares a quote from Phil McGraw about luck.
Becoming & Staying Debt-Free discusses the Top 24 Ways to Destroy Your Credit Cards. Once we pay off our credit card debt, I’ll be cancelling and destroying some cards. I’d like to do the #1, but with a reel mower, it wouldn’t quite work.
Zen Habits has an article on Living a Life Without Credit or Debt. If this is a route you would like to take with your debt reduction plan, you should give this article a read.
Lastly, I would like to say thank you for the very kind words and the Blogger Reflection Award I received from My Domestic Church.
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About This Site
My Debt
- Original Debt: $97,293.06
- Paid: $1,927.89
- Remaining: $95,365.17
- Emergency Fund: $1100
- Broken Down
- Line of Credit 2: $0.00
- Line of Credit 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 2: $245.00
- Credit Card 3: $405.00
- Credit Card 6: $1,785.00
- Credit Card 7: $2,381.17
- Consolidation Loan: $11,000.00
- Credit Card 10: $14,519.00
- Auto Loan 1: $16,093.00
- Credit Card 11: $23,873.00
- Auto Loan 2: $25,064.00
Finance Blogging Buddies
- Beachgirl’s Budget Blog
- Becoming and Staying Debt Free
- Boston Gals Open Wallet
- Debt Free Hispanic
- Debt Kid
- Debt Reduction 101
- Dual Income No Kids
- Everybody Loves Your Money
- Financial Hack
- Free Money Finance
- From the Brink of Bankruptcy
- Generation X Finance
- GRACEful Retirement
- Grad Money Matters
- It’s Your Money
- Josephsangl.com
- Kick Debt’s Butt
- Lazy Man and Money
- Low Income Life
- Make Love Not Debt
- Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge
- Mighty Bargain Hunter
- Money, Matter and More Musings
- My 1st Million at 33
- No Credit Needed
- One Million and Beyond
- Personal Finance Advice
- pfblogs.org
