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Apr 6, 2009    |       5 comments

Q&A Opportunity With Junior Achievement

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I was contacted not too long ago by Junior Achievement. They were wondering if I would like to do an interview with them on here. I’ve done interviews in the past, but I never felt like I asked the right questions. So I wrote them back asking if I could ask you for your questions to have them answer (like what I did with the authors of “On My Own Two Feet). They are happy to do a Q&A with you!

First of all, I should let you know more about Junior Achievement. From their site:

JA Worldwide is the world’s largest organization dedicated to educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs.

I realize now, more than ever, how important it is for children to learn life skills related to money. I try to fit in some personal finance tidbits when I can with our son and we are trying to be good financial role models. Sometimes it’s tough. With the economy the way it is right now, kids are feeling some of the stress.

Junior Achievement sent me some facts to share:

  • 14 percent of U.S. teens 15-17 years-old report the need to contribute financially to the family budget.
  • One-third of all teens report less job availability.
  • 53 percent of teens surveyed say they’re choosing activities that cost less money.
  • More than 50 percent say they talk about the economy with their friends.
  • 18 percent of 15 -17 year olds polled said they have lost a job due the economy.
  • Nearly three-in-ten teens (29 percent) said that the economy is causing them anxiety.
  • More than three-quarters (77 percent) of the teens polled say that their parents are talking about the economy more than they used to.
  • Nearly half (49 percent) said their parents had discussed family finances with them as a result of the economy.
  • 15 percent of teens said they have reduced extracurricular activities as a result of the economy.

With that, I’d like to open up the floor to you for asking Junior Achievement any of your “kids & money” questions. Just leave your question as a comment below. I’ll keep the comments open until Tuesday (04-07-09) at 11:59pm and then I will send them over for them to answer. Depending on the response – they might not be able to answer them all.

Apr 5, 2009    |       12 comments

A Decision Has Been Made

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I’d like to thank everyone for alerting me to the new advice that Suze Orman has when it comes to building up your savings or paying off credit card debt. She used to tell everyone to pay off their credit card debt. Now she’s saying to save…save…save.

Her advice makes perfect sense. Credit cards companies have been unpredictable lately with closing accounts or reducing credit limits. If you pay off your balance, you may not have a credit card to use in the event of an emergency. I have a lot of respect for Suze for changing her stance.

I knew back in January that we were going to do our best to meet our credit card payoff goal date of May 2009. I wanted to do it without having to pull from our savings. But after crunching the numbers we can come up with $1,500 for sure this month.

Since we are so close, we are going to pay as much as we can towards our credit card debt and pay off the rest with our savings. I’m going to see how many tricks we can pull out of our hat (extra hours, selling stuff, etc.) to keep our savings as intact as possible. But as of April 30th, we want to be credit card debt-free and will pull from our savings as needed.

Let me just say that I do not recommend that you pull from savings to pay credit card debt unless you really think through everything. If it wasn’t for our business, we would more than likely have followed Suze’s new advice. As I previously mentioned, once our credit card debt is paid off I was going to retire from writing on this blog and a new blogger will begin with their debt story. The time that is used for this blog is really needed for our business to expand.

Our story is far from being over and I know some of you mentioned how nice it would be if I still gave updates somewhere. Well, you can change retiring from this blog to “semi-retiring.” I will not be posting daily, but I can post when the mood strikes when there is an interesting update. The posts will not be as detailed as before, but if our decision to use our savings to pay off the last of our debt bites us in the butt – you’ll hear about it right here.

I sure hope it doesn’t, though. The plan is to replenish the money that we end up “borrowing” the next month. We’ll kick our income into high gear and we’ll put off the home repairs that we need for a little bit longer. It will be all about our savings account for a while.

Nothing in life is ever guaranteed. You can budget until you turn blue in the face but life can never be completely planned. Taking everything into consideration, we think this is the best choice for us.

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