We are bad at saying “No” to good sales pitches. We just are. I know this. It is the reason we have a timeshare (and I still don’t regret it). Maybe that lack of regret played into my decision that we should attend a Direct Buy presentation when the offer was made. I know it had something to do with the $200 worth of restaurant.com gift cards they offered, as well as the two round tripread more…
Back in April, I wrote about why we weren’t refinancing– we’re not eligible for HARP, we were very likely underwater in our home, and we could afford the mortgage payments without hardship. Well, today, about 90 minutes before this posts, we will be having a phone conversation with a mortgage broker and likely starting the refinancing process. Why? What’s changed? Well, we’re still not eligible for HARP, and we can still afford our mortgage payments withread more…
It is the holiday season once again, and with the holiday season comes the holiday advertising. That means that it’s time for one other holiday tradition- my rant against holiday car commercials. Last year, I wrote that Cars are NOT Gifts, and it’s 27 comments make it my most popular post ever (thanks to The Consumerist for linking to it). This year, believe it or not, I have yet to see a commercial suggesting that someoneread more…
Today is Election Day in the United States, where I, and most of my readers, live. Because this will post around the time that most East Coast polls are closing, I have to imagine that if you are actually reading this today, you are looking for a break from election coverage, and that if you are reading this on Wednesday, you are happy to be done with election coverage. With that in mind, I thought itread more…
Completely off topic note: For those who are interested in an update on our little Junebug, you can head on over to today’s post at Life by Pets. While we should have spent over $650 so far, the vet office keeps waving fees and we’ve paid less than $200. This is, with a few edits, a post I put up over on a financial message board I’m part of earlier this week. One of theread more…
The Question: In Tuesday’s post about what to do with my raise, I mentioned that our mortgage is at a 6% APR. Naturally, one of the first questions I was asked was why in the world don’t we refinance our mortgage? Considering current interest rates, we could be saving a ton. I’ll be honest. I would love to refinance our house, but right now, it just is not a viable option. We are paying for ourread more…
I need a break from serious topics at the moment, and I love the “getting to know you” type posts where bloggers give a list of things about themselves that we don’t already know. At the same time, I’m not certain I could really give you that kind of list, because I’m pretty open about things. Most things that I could think of to put on that kind of list, I’m pretty certain I’ve already mentionedread more…
I almost always do our taxes twice. I do a preliminary run through as soon as we have all (or most) of our paperwork. And later I’ll sit down with TurboTax and do a complete return. I like to know what’s coming up. This week, partly in preparation for yesterday’s Coffee Talk post, I did the first run through of our 2011 return. Last year, we owed around $1,100. This year, C only received half asread more…
Important information about the data: prior to mid 2010, money that went on the credit card never got classified in any category other than credit card. That skews the data for everything from eating out, allowance, pets, house, and misc. I have data going back to 2005, but for now, we’re sticking with what our financial life has looked like since 2008. Why 2008? That was the year I graduated with my MBA, the lastread more…
Back in August, I wrote a guest post for Daily Money $hot about Making Choices. In it, I talked about some of the things I choose to spend money on, even if I could be saving money by changing. In fact, one of those things has changed- we no longer have high priced cable. We found that we can get by with the most basic package and are saving ourselves $100/month. There are other choices weread more…
