Archive for August, 2007
What to Do If You Get in a Car Accident
If you find yourself in a car accident, here’s what to do to protect yourself and make sure that everything gets taken care of. Be Prepared. Always carry a cell-phone with you when you’re driving, as well as ak it that includes a pen and paper to take notes with, a disposable camera to take [...]
How to Cancel Your AOL Account (and Get a Real ISP)
America Online has rightfully had the reputation of being the “McDonalds” of internet service providers for quite some time. The speeds that they’re offering can’t compete with broadband internet service from the local cable and phone companies. The prices they’re offering aren’t very competitive and their software is almost impossible to get rid of. If [...]
Low Income Earners: Use the Retirement Savings Contribution Credit to Save Big on Taxes
Every year Congress the IRS comes out with a new set of changes to the tax law in hopes to make the system more equitable and fair. It doesn’t turn out that way, but sometimes they come up with a good idea here and there. One of the positive changes this year is that there’s [...]
Purchasing Home Monitoring Services Without Getting Ripped-Off
Home monitoring services go by a number of different names, such as home protection services, burglar alarm monitoring services, but they all do pretty much the same thing. They’ll install an alarm system on your home, monitor it, and call the police if somebody breaks into your home or if your home starts on fire. [...]
Comparisons of Top VOIP Service Plans
With the recent disappearance from internet telephony provider, Sunrocket, there’s a major gap in the phone market for people who used to have Sunrocket’s service. Many will be migrated to other services on a seamless basis, but it still might be a good time to take a look at some of the other phone services [...]
How to Get Your Invention Patented and Sold Without Getting Scammed
There are a lot of normal people who come up with new ideas for products that offer better and more efficient ways to accomplish tasks ways to do things, but a lot of those ideas are never acted on or get to market because of the difficulty in getting your idea sold and produced. There [...]
How to Protect Yourself from eBay Fraud
There’s no way to measure what percentage of eBay auction items that are being sold are fraudulent, or what percentage of eBay buyers have no intention of actually paying for the item, but the sheer number of attempts to fraud honest eBay members is most certainly a growing problem. You can protect yourself from eBay [...]
The Truth About Variable Annuities
There are a lot of financial products which receive some negative attention, such as gold and whole-life insurance, however if there was one investment product which consistently received bad news, it would have to be the variable annuity. We often hear about dishonest brokers who push people into high fee annuity plans without explanation. Should [...]
What To Do If Your Identity Has Been Stolen
Having your identity stolen can be a very gut-wrenching experience, and a very painstaking and time-consuming thing to take care of. If you’ve found out that your identity has been stolen, here is what you need to do in order to begin cleaning up the mess. First, if someone is using your identity and making [...]
529 College Savings Plans Demystified
A few years ago, Congress passed a means for parents to save additional money for their children to go to college on top of the educational savings account. 529 college savings accounts allow you to invest money for your child’s education, and all of the growth is tax free. In addition you can currently spend [...]
Christian Sharing Plans as an Alternative to Health Insurance
Health insurance premiums seem to keep rising every single year. This is getting really expensive and some people are looking for creative ways to cut cost in their health care. Some people are raising their deductible, eliminating co pays, and taking on more risk rather than transferring it to the insurance carrier. Others are going [...]
The Taxes That You Probably Aren’t Paying on Your eBay Items
Most eBayers who put up an item that they no longer have any use for up for auction here and there never even consider that there might be tax implications for what they’re doing. They put up the item, collect their money, pay eBay it’s cut, and ship out the item. Like it or not, [...]
What To Do When Your Wedding Gets Cancelled
I had been seriously dating a girl for most of last year. Things were seemingly going great, I had thought she was “the one.” One fateful October evening, I proposed to her. She said yes, we were both excited as could be for the possibility of marriage. A few months later some real concerns began [...]
Why Satellite Radio is a Waste of Money
If it weren’t for radio, driving long distances would probably be a lot more boring than it already is. Unfortunately in some of the more rural parts of the country, there just aren’t many options beyond the farm report and country music. Others simply want consistency in the radio stations that they have available to [...]
Frugality on Wheels: How Save Money While Traveling for Work
During the day I work as a systems administrator for the state of South Dakota. As part of providing support for a dozen different locations, I get to do my fair share of traveling. This week I did over 800 miles of driving alone. Traveling for work can be a losing proposition if you’re not [...]
Why You Should Keep Your Money Invested in a Declining Market
With news of the collapsing sub-prime mortgage market and worries that the market’s over-valued, many analysts in the financial news media are running around like Chicken Little proclaiming that the market’s going down and you should get out while you still can to safer and more liquid positions. It’s true that the market’s going under [...]
What to Do If You Have a Sub-Prime Mortgage
A few years ago there was a seemingly never ending glut of capital available to be loaned out. Mortgage companies and banks did whatever they could to make mortgages look more desirable and offer mortgages to people who normally wouldn’t be able to afford them. This was not a sustainable process because many of the [...]
The True Cost of a Mountain Dew Addiction
Every now and then you’ll hear stories on the news about how using methamphetamine, heroine, or crack cocaine has seriously messed up individual’s lives, caused them irreparable harm to their wallet and landed them in jail for years on end. You’ll probably hear stories about the excessive use of alcohol, why you shouldn’t drink and [...]
6 Percent Online Savings Accounts: Fact or Fiction
Many Americans have been looking online to get better rates of return on their money in the last few years. Some individuals chase ultra high-yield investments which often turn out to be scams, but they’re the exception rather than rule. Most people looking for better interest rates on their money look to internet-based interest checking [...]
Two Key Factors That Can Dramatically Improve Your Credit Score
There are a lot of books, tables, eBooks, and other works available which are alleged to contain top secret information and tricks of the trade on how to improve your credit score. They often sell for hundreds of dollars, but they’re just not worth it. It’s true that Fair Isaac keeps the proprietary formula that [...]
FICO Score Calculation Methods Changing Soon
Fair Isaac Corp has become a household name in the last few years as people are increasingly fixated on making sure that they’re credit worthy and as the usage of debt in the United States has increased on an exponential basis. Their proprietary mathematical formula is used every day to determine whether or not people [...]
How to Qualify for Mortgage without a Credit Score
Many Americans are absolutely fixated on their credit score. They believe that they have to do whatever it takes to keep their credit score in good standing. There was once a woman who called into the Dave Ramsey show who had not eaten in two days, but was current on her Mastercard payment. That’s an [...]
Student Loans are for College Only
Most college students don’t ever consider how much money they’re actually borrowing to pay for school. They don’t have the money to pay cash semester by semester, and instead casually borrow money through Stafford loans. They never take the time to consider what sort of payment they’re going to be faced with and how much [...]
Social Networking
Seems to be that the cool thing for personal finance bloggers to do today is have a facebook account. I’m still not sure what the appeal is, but if you want to be my friend…
Why You Shouldn’t Get a 30 Year Mortgage, Ever!
Quite often people who are buying homes, often for the first time, are not financially prepared to do so. They still have a lot of debt and other liabilities that’s eating away at their monthly paycheck. They don’t have much of anything for a nest egg and in all reality can’t reasonably afford a mortgage [...]
Creating Effective Long Term Non-Retirement Savings
Most Americans have the problem of not saving enough money for the future. They live on much more than they make, have all sorts of debt, and haven’t done really anything for retirement planning. They certainly have financial problems to deal with, but what about people on the other end of the spectrum? These people [...]
How Much Are You Worth?
If you’re thinking about applying for a new job in the near future or are planning to ask for a raise, you have to figure out how much you’re worth. What’s the value of your skills, knowledge and work ethic? Knowing what others perceive you to be worth is perhaps the single best negotiating tool [...]
after working on our loan modification for a year with WF I got a denial letter April 26. They sold ...
I recently came across your blog and have been
reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t ...
yow arre a idiod 