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Apr 3, 2009    |       7 comments

Watch Out for Recorded Calls

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Jen sent me a link to an article that is a must share!

Several times in the past month I’ve received a recorded call from “Heather” with “Card Services” offering to lower the interest rates on all of my credit cards to 6.9 percent. She then instructs me to “press 1” to be transferred to a live agent.

[Via Yahoo]

It turns out that these “Heather” calls are claiming that they can lower your interest rates by negotiating with your creditors. In actuality, you’ll receive a debt pay down book. They are asking for a lot of money for information you can get for free by checking out a personal finance book from the library.

I get a lot of those recorded calls. Most are for an auto warranty but I have received a few of these calls that claim that they can reduce your interest rates. I don’t recall if the woman in the recording was Heather or not – but it sounds very familiar to the call in the article.

My rule of thumb is to not do anything when someone I don’t know calls me – even if it is someone wanting to do a survey. I tell them that I never do anything over the phone and to please not take it personally. 98% of the time they hang up on me without even saying good bye so I’ve been following that rule for quite a few years.

Thanks Jen for sharing this article with us!

Apr 2, 2009    |       9 comments

No April Fools Jokes on Me

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The time stamp on this post is correct. I am a bit of a night owl tonight. I have been for the past few nights working to meet a deadline. My eyes are extremely tired and my cat is looking at me like, “Why aren’t you going to bed??” Sigh – my body is getting too old for this 🙂

My April Fool’s day was pretty uneventful. No one played any jokes on me. My son and I almost got my husband. We have two locks on our door and we were going to alternate locking them so my husband would unlock one and then we’d lock the other. He’d unlock the other and then we’d lock the first one. It was the perfect prank – if he didn’t hear us on the other side of the door. We did our best to hold in the laughter but we couldn’t do it. It feels good to laugh like that since sometimes as an adult things are so serious.

Speaking of a serious subject, I haven’t touched our finances in a few days. I had to pull some money out of our savings account for some upcoming medical costs that are not covered by our insurance. I’m not exactly sure how much it will cost, but I took out $400 to be safe. Our last debt payment really wiped out the cash we had available. At this point, I’m not sure if we will replenish the savings account before our credit card debt is paid off. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m starting to feel the pressure, though. That May 2009 goal date for credit card debt-payoff is right around the corner. Part of me is saying, “Go ahead – use the savings to pay it off.” The other part of me is saying, “Don’t do it – what if an emergency comes up?”

I think tomorrow will be dedicated to taking a close look at our finances to get my bearings.

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