Everybody Loves Your Money

Parade has a great article about a family that moved in to their dream home but ultimately sold it, bought a house that was much smaller and half the price, and then donated the difference to charity. One thing that I found interesting about their story is that doing this didn’t hurt their family, rather it actually helped them become closer.

It doesn’t sound like they’ve regretted one bit of their decision. We also live in a house that’s too big for us and I’ve often thought about downsizing. While we’ve thought about it, we haven’t made any moves and certainly haven’t considered the incredible sacrifices that this family made!

Here is the article:
http://www.parade.com/news/2010/01/17-why-we-gave-away-our-home.html

Nickel over at FiveCentNickel has accomplished what I would really like to do. He has paid off his mortgage in about 7.5 years. You can feel the excitement and satisfaction in his writing as he explains how he did it. I’m impressed.

We are also paying additional towards our mortgage since it’s really the only debt we have. My goal isn’t quite as aggressive as Nickel’s but I do intend to be able to pay the mortgage off when my daughter enters college. We’re off to a great start!

Currently we are paying an extra payment each year by participating in our credit union’s FREE biweekly payment program. (They don’t charge a fee for it like most banks). We are also paying additional blocks of money towards the mortgage each month once we see how much we have left over after all the bills are paid. The critical part of this is that our bills only account for less than 50% of our take home pay. That leaves us with a sizeable chunk of cash to put in savings and towards the mortgage each month.

The other part of the equation for us is that we own (no mortgage) the lake house that we built a couple years ago. We have no debt against that and, even in this market, estimate that we could sell it for about $150K. My goal is to pay the mortgage down far enough that we would always have the option of selling our second home so that we own this one outright. Our primary house is much larger and is located close to the city where all the jobs are so we wouldn’t want to sell the house we are in and move out to the lake, although it’s always an option and would make us mortgage/debt free instantly.

Anyway, go check out Nickel’s posts on being debt free and how he did it. It’s well worth reading!

Free Money Finance is having a March Madness event that is highlighting the best of the best personal finance blog posts. He’s pitting two great articles against each other in a series of games. It’s a great way to check out some quality personal finance articles and broaden your reading list of good PF Bloggers.
Go check it out!

I just read an article about David Cerullo. David is the head of the Inspiration Networks religious organization. They have nearly $100 million in annual revenues, mostly from donations by their followers. The church preaches that people who donate are more favored by God.

Unfortunately the ministry is hitting hard times and has had to lay people off, turn down the heat and cut costs wherever it can. Apparently it can’t cut costs at the CEO level. David Cerullo is making $1.5 million per year and is building a $4 million home in a gated community in western South Carolina.

I think I prefer my religious leaders to live a little bit more modest lifestyle…….

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-07-02-cerullo-money_N.htm

I stumbled on to Mint’s infographic about all the pitfalls of credit cards. I especially like how they compare it to falling down a very deep ravine until you hit fire at the bottom.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth checking out:
http://www.mint.com/blog/finance-core/the-descent-into-credit-card-debt/

I’m not sure how long Mint.com has had this feature but I just noticed it today. Now you can add assets like real estate, vehicles and any other valuable assets you have. You can even associate an asset (like a house) with a particular loan so that it calculates your equity in that asset.

I found these features by clicking on the “Your Accounts” link in the upper right hand corner of the site once I was logged in. They do have a feature where you can plug your address in and it will go out to a third party to get a current value estimate, although that didn’t work for me. I ended up manually putting my values in based on a conservative method I’ve used for calculating values.

Anyway, if you are a Mint user, go check it out. If you aren’t a Mint user, you might want to check it out. I’m thrilled with the app.

I’m a big fan of the office.  I found this pretty darned funny.  They found pretty good characters to compare with the American version.  If you read fark.com, you’ve probably already seen it.

Favorite line: Michael is a big phony wiener face

When will people quit falling for these scams?

A LONELY postal worker has landed himself in huge debt – after handing over £130,000 to a string of internet scammers.

Shane Symington started sending cash to the fraudsters in 2007 after he was contacted by a woman claiming she needed funds to help her sick mother.

The trusting postie agreed and started sending money from an inheritance he had received when an elderly relative passed away…………..

Shane, Shane, Shane.  No alarms went off?  Since when does the FBI ask for their victims to fund their investigations?  I feel sorry for you but I’m disappointed that nothing ever seemed “off” with this whole deal.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2131643.ece

Companies are planning on being in the giving mood on inauguration day.  Here are a few of the goodies that you can pick up for free next Tuesday:

Krispy Kreme:

Stop by Krispy Kreme and choose your favorite donut.  No charge

Starbucks:

You’re obviously going to need to wash that tasty donut down with something so why not stop by Starbucks and sign up to volunteer for 5 hours somewhere?  There’s a free cup of coffee in it for you and you’ll be doing a good thing for your community.

If you are excited about the inauguration and wish you could be there, maybe watching it in a movie theater for free will suffice.  MSNBC has partnered with a select group of movie theaters around the country so that people can get a great view of the inauguration with popcorn and a soda.  It’s first come first served so don’t delay if you’re interested:

http://www.msnbcevents.com/

Without a doubt one of my favorite parts of participating in the personal finance blog arena is reading the great stories of people that have awakened to the lunacy of carrying lots of debt and have changed their habits to grab hold of their financial lives.  One of the first people to do this was NCN @ No Credit Needed.  I can remember sending him a note sincerely congratulating him when he paid off his last debt.  I really felt happy for him and was impressed with the huge turnaround he had made.  Fast forward to today and there are many more people blogging about the progress they’ve made in converting from someone who carries lots of debt to someone that has a fat bank account, or at least is now building wealth instead of pedaling as fast as they can to keep the collection agencies away.

Here are a few of the people out there who have made life changes that have given them back control of their finances:

NCN @ http://www.ncnblog.com/ is debt free and is helping others work towards their goal with NCN Network.

Tricia @ Blogging Away Debt only has $5,999 left to pay off on her credit cards.  She started the journey owing over $37,000.

JB @ Adventures in Debt is working off over $27,000 in debt.

LisaClark @ I Will Be Debt Free is working off a hefty chunk of debt “UK style”.

Twinsmom @ Blessed By Twins is working off $13,000 in debt.

These are just a few examples of the MANY people that are blogging about getting out of debt.  Thankfully when I started this blog a few years ago we weren’t trying to work off debt, but this blog has forced me to look much more closely at how we spend our money and has kept us on a cash only spending basis.  It’s easy to see how many people have ended up with more debt than they intended.  Life seems to throw a lot of curve balls at each of us.  Just this week we spent $1000 on the Jenn Air range that went out in our kitchen.  If we didn’t maintain a decent sized emergency fund we would have been forced to use credit.  The good news is that once you pay off the last of the debt and start building even a modest savings balance, your finances get much easier and a lot less stressful.

If you want to take a look at a lot of other people’s debt, click over to the No Credit Needed Network.  You will see a ton of links on the right hand side of the page that link to each person’s financial goals and where they are at with them.  Let the voyeur in you peek through the window in to other people’s worlds.  It’s really quite interesting.