MyMoneyMinute.com

I was out of town this weekend, spending time with The Lovely Miss H on a weekend trip to Austin, Texas.  We had a great time, but I didn’t get a chance to promote the Carnivals in which I participated last week, as well as some of my favorite links I recently read.  I’ll get a fresh post out tomorrow about the financial “Do’s & Don’ts” of a weekend road-trip.  Meanwhile, enjoy these links!

Carnivals

The 199th Carnival of Personal Finance accepted my article on finishing my taxes and a TurboTax Review.

My interview with the creators of moneyStrands was featured in the 59th Money Hacks Carnival.

The 2nd Carnival of Pecuniary Delights featured my article titled Beyond The Paper: How Your Digital Imprint Affects Your Employment.

Thanks to the hosts for each of these Carnivals for including my submissions!

Links O’ The Week

Here’s a few links for you to check out in your spare time:

Looking to make that resume sizzle?  Squawkfox has 8 Keywords That Set Your Resume On Fire!

Single Guy Money gives us 5 Reasons To Pay Off Debt.  Short, simple, and to the point.

Dog Ate My Finances says she’s glad that Cigarette Taxes Are Up.

Finally, Get Rich Slowly offers a Financial Literacy Compendium to start off Financial Literacy Month.  There is a WEALTH of information just in this post on all topics Personal Finance.  Take a look.

photo by amir taj

Links O' The Week

Are You Choosing To Participate In This Recession?

Let’s face it – the bad economic times are real.  We are in a deep recession.  Unemployment is high, construction is at a stand-still, and the stock market is in major correction.

But have we deepened our misery with an attitude of “doom & gloom”?  Are we in a self-fulfilling prophecy, where it has in fact become a more harmful economic environment because we are living in fear of how bad it can get?  While some of us may not have much say in a lay-off or a salary freeze, we do control our attitudes and whether we live our lives out of a spirit of fear, or from a spirit of empowerment and hope.

Town Hall For Hope

Dave Ramsey, a best-selling author and nationally-syndicated radio host, is a personal finance guru and America’s chief proponent of a debt-free lifestyle.  Dave will be hosting a Town Hall For Hope on April 23, 2009, at 8pm EST.  Over 5,000 churches and other organizations have signed up to host the event, which will be broadcast via a live private feed to each location, as well as through select radio markets and on the Fox Business Network, where Dave also hosts a daily television show.

In the 90 minute broadcast, Dave will spend 30 minutes speaking directly to our current economic climate, where true “hope” comes from (hint: it doesn’t come from Washington, DC!), and what real “change” must happen to put you & your family on the road to financial fitness.

The remaining 60 minutes will be split into two 30-minute Q&A sessions.  Questions will be taken not only from the live audience in Oklahoma City, but Dave is also going “Web 2.0″ by integrating and taking questions from these social networking sites:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter (@TownHallForHope #THFH)

Find A Host In Your Area

I’m hoping to find Dave’s message and this Town Hall For Hope both encouraging and inspiring.  You too should consider attending this event!  Click here or on the picture at the top of the page to locate a church or other organization that is hosting in your area.

Have you been reacting out of fear in this down economy?  Where do you place YOUR hope?  Tell me what would you ask Dave in this upcoming Town Hall For Hope.

Personal Finance, Uncategorized dave ramsey, Town Hall for Hope

Record Drop In Credit Card Usage

The Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that credit card usage & consumer borrowing (non-mortgage debt) has dropped at record levels.  Credit card spending fell at an annual rate of $7.8 billion, or 9.7%.  People are charging less and saving more.  That’s good news, right?

Lesson Learned?

In a vaccuum, decreased credit consumption is a victory in the battle against the bondage of debt.  Does that mean the Dave Ramsey’s and Suze Orman’s of the world have gotten through to the consumptive masses, and people are rejecting debt?  Hopefully, but studies show household debt decreases during times of recession and then, as creditors begin to make more credit lines available, consumers increase their credit card borrowing levels at the first sign that the economy is breaking out of a recession.

In fact, the reason the credit crunch is so huge during this recession, is because during the last recession (dot-com bust, 2001-2002), household debt actually grew because of low-interest rates and the break-out of credit card “teaser rates”.  So instead of a natural ebb & flow to credit availability, creditors have slashed credit card limits and increased minimum payments.  Basically, we’re now forced to double-correct our credit usage because our households kept on borrowing through our last recession!

Don’t Let History Repeat Itself

Use this double-correction recession to your advantage, and resist the urge to increase credit card spending when our economy begins to break out of this.  Practice delayed gratification by saving up to pay for things.  It is character-developing.  Use blog post and financial personalities to motivate yourself to get out of debt.  If you think you’re in too big a hole, consult some professionals about options prior to filing bankruptcy!  The point being, you need to eliminate past mistakes and work hard to put yourself into a position where financial mistakes won’t happen again.

Proverbs 22:7 (The Message) says “The poor are always ruled over by the rich, so don’t borrow and put yourself under their power.” Other versions say the borrower is servant, or slave to the lender.

With a deep recession and slashed credit limits, you have been forced to change your habits… for now.  What habits you default to when times are good again economically?

Are you subjected to the power of the rich?  Are you a servant?  Who owns you?

photo by Andres Rueda

Personal Finance consumer debt, credit card, dave ramsey, debt, suze orman

Tire Troubles?

Our family goes through tires like nobody’s business.  On my wife’s car, it seems like we’re always having trouble with the alignment.  My car has high-performance tires (which can’t be replaced with normal tires) that do not qualify for warranty, and have to be replaced about every 20,000 miles!

Is It An Emergency?

By definition, emergencies are unforeseeable or unplanned event that comes up.

Maybe the first time I replaced some tires, it was an emergency.  But now that I’m aware of my “high-performance” tires, it no longer is an emergency when it comes time to prematurely replacing them.  I would encourage you to add a “car maintenance” fund to your budget.  If you have a positive balance at the end of the month, set it aside and add it to the next month’s “car maintenance” allotment.  Allow it to build so when something DOES happen to your car (and it will), you’ll have a bit of cash set aside to help cover the costs.

In our budget, we’ve added an additional $50/month or so to our car maintenance line just because I know we’ll have to replace some tires each year.  It comes in handy to have an extra couple hundred dollars sitting around when you’re treading on thin ice.. or tires, as it may be.

Where To Buy Tires

We like to buy our tires at Discount Tire, also called America’s Tire in some parts of the country.  They are really close to home, have many locations in our area, and most importantly, they’ve got cheap prices!  Other people have loved using Wal-Mart or Costco to get their tires replaced.  If you’re an online shopper, you can even try Tires-Easy.com, which appears to have pretty decent prices, and can deliver either to your residence or directly to your local tire shop where they can install them for you.

Do you have a budget line for car maintenance?  Where do you shop for tires?

photo by david.nikonvscanon

Cars

Lots of good reading out there. Here’s some recent favorites:

Carnivals

My post on What We Learn From Tragedy was featured in the 1st ever Carnival of Pecuniary Delights last week.  This Carnival features articles with information that’s more timeless content rather than the weekly fad, and will be a great recurring resource for its readers.

My post challenging you to Identify Your Underwater Financial Volcanoes was featured in the April Fools Edition of the Money Hacks Carnival.

The Carnival of Debt Reduction featured my post:  Don’t Laugh, It’s Paid For!

The Carnival of Personal Finance featured my Recession Buster: Increase Cash Flow With High Interest Checking.

Links O’ The Week

Money Grubbing Lawyer says we should Leave Emotion out of Negotiation (and if you find out how, let me know!)

Frugal Dad says Discover Cards for Teens Creates Bad Habits.

Pimp Your Finances has an Interview with Ramit Sethi, best-selling author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Five Cent Nickel shares with us some money advice and principles that he got from his followers on Twitter.

NCN also gets responses from his fellow “Tweeps” on Reasons Why We Fail To Stick To Our Budget.  Look for my comment in his post!

Clever Dude has a great post on Deconstructing the Job Offer.

Counting My Pennies talks the size of our Emergency Funds.

I’ve got more suggested reading, but that’ll do for now.  Have a great weekend!

Links O' The Week

As I recently chronicled, we recently paid off my wife’s car.  The bank mailed the title to us the other day, and reminded us we have a few details left to take care of now that we’re official car owners.  I’m passing along their reminders with a few of my own suggestions & comments mixed in.  For other inspiration, see a similar article written by PT Money when he paid off his car in January.

What To Do After You Pay Off Your Car Loan

The Title

Check your title to make sure a bank representative signed & dated your release of lien. They should have upon mailing it to you, but hey, mistakes happen.  A signed & dated release of lien is satisfactory to transfer a clean title down the road, but if you want the lien completely removed from your title, go to your local county tax office, pay the applicable fees, and order a new title with the lien removed.

Store your title in a safe place. Title can be stolen and forged, so I recommend you don’t keep the title in your car.  Leave it in a protected place, such as your home safe, a locked file cabinet, or a safe deposit box at your local bank.

Insurance Policy

Change the “loss payee” on your insurance policy. When your vehicle’s financed, the lender requires you list them as “loss payee”, which means that if you total your car, any insurance payment for a total loss goes to cover the remaining loan balance first.  When you become the outright owner, you should change this to avoid any miscommunication and hassle with the bank and insurance adjuster should you total your car.  We use Esurance for our auto insurance, so this was easy for us.  I just logged onto my online account, and edited the car information.  In fact, I had forgotten to do this for our other car, so I changed them both on the spot.

While you’re at it, review the rest of your insurance policy. I considered raising my deductible, but decided against it for now.  But I did decide to add roadside assistance to our policy should our cars breakdown.  Both our vehicles are getting along in miles and we have an 80 mile round-trip commute each day.  I figured an extra $10 every six months wasn’t too bad for roadside assistance coverage.

Personal Finance

Snowball your car payment. If you just paid off a typical car loan, odds are your payment was about $400/month.  What will you do with all this extra money each month?  Don’t waste it on frivolous spending.  Be focused & intentional with that extra dough.  Add it to your debt snowball, or continue paying yourself a car payment each month, so you can buy your next car with cash, rather than a cash advance.

Take a minute to celebrate! That’s one less chain in the bondage of debt.  One more link broken on your way to freedom.  Congratulations are in order!  Pat yourself on the back, enjoy a celebratory dinner — whatever works to keep you motivated to continue on the path to financial awareness.

photo by rick

Personal Finance car insurance, car loan, Cars, dave ramsey, debt snowball, loan, snowball, title

moneyStrands is the latest in the explosion of personal finance programs to hit the web.  Recently, I had a chance to have a virtual sit-down with Ryan Williams & Atakan Cetinsoy from the moneyStrands team to find out a little more about their newest product and the Strands business line.

Tell me a little bit about moneyStrands and how you came up with the concept?

There are many budget & financial tracking websites popping up these days, such as Mint or Wesabe.  Do you see these sites as your competition, or does moneyStrands cater to its own niche market?

I’ve signed up for moneyStrands and honestly, I have been very impressed at its clean look, functionality, and usability by regular guys like me.  What do you like about your site that you feel is an improvement over other financial management websites?  What do you anticipate improving on the moneyStrands website?

moneyStrands is only one aspect of the Strands brand.  Tell me about the other branches of the Strands brand.

What is the overall vision for the Strands brand?  Do you hope to merge or enter ventures with other online companies that would compliment your company’s vision?

Finally, I am always impressed with those that have a vision and go out into the real world and execute it.  Tell me a little bit about yourselves.

Thanks to Ryan & Atakan for the interview. I’ll have a review of their website soon!

Personal Finance interview, moneyStrands, personal finance management

Finally Did Our Taxes

I finally completed our taxes.  I had eyeballed our tax returns about two months ago, but since my initial sketch showed we’d probably owe upwards of $2,500, I decided avoidance was my best option until I felt like dealing with it!

Lucky for me I waited.  Since I was hanging around Twitter at the right time, I won a free online copy of Turbo Tax.  Thanks to Jim Wang (@bargainr) who blogs at Bargaineering, for the promotional code!

The Verdict

Well, looks like we owe the IRS $1,288.00.  I hate to owe money, but ultimately, that’s FAR better than owing $2,500.00+!  Turns out that in my original “eyeball” test, I didn’t factor into account that we can deduct our real estate taxes, along with some other minor deductions.  All-in-all, I’m satisfied with this amount.

Tax Tip

In e-filing our taxes, TurboTax gave us the option to electronically pay our tax balance on any date up to and including April 15th.

Here’s my tip: if you have your money in a high-interest checking account, set your automatic deduction to occur on April 15th, and keep your money earning interest up until the last possible date. It may only buy you a happy meal, but hey — it’ll be a free happy meal!

How’d You Like TurboTax?

This is the third year in a row that we’ve used TurboTax.  Every year, we consider hiring a CPA to do our taxes, but ultimately, I just don’t think our taxes are complicated enough yet to justify hiring someone else to prepare our taxes.

I used the Deluxe package, valued at $49.95.  In Texas we have no state income tax, so all I had was federal taxes to worry about.

I’ll keep this short & sweet — I love the online access they provide now.  They’ll also keep your information stored online for next year.  The process was very user-friendly and pretty easy.  The only issues I ran into where I didn’t feel TurboTax didn’t do a great job explaining what they were looking for was when they requested the “basis” level for gifts to charities; but I did figure it out using their online forums and a bit of Google searching.

I have not used any of their more complicated software for small businesses or rental property issues, so I cannot attest to how TurboTax stands up to those with a bit more tax complications in their life.  But for the relatively simple, I thought it did a great job.

Have you used TurboTax or another tax software program?  Give me a mini-review below.  I’m interested in your comments.

photo by Howdy, I’m H. Michael Karshis

taxes

It has been another busy week for me, but I’ve managed to find time to read a few other blogs here and there.  Linked below are some articles I found interesting.

This week I’m planning on posting an interview with the creators of MoneyStrands, which is a spending & financial tracking program, similar to Mint or Wesabe.  I’m also anticipating talking about wills & estate planning.  I may even have a guest post from another blogger, and of course, life happens so we’ll check in with current events if need be.

Have a great week and stay tuned for updates.  If you haven’t subscribed yet, enter your e-mail address in the box to the right and you’ll get updates in your e-mail automatically.

Links O’ The Week

How many times have you heard that it is “normal” to have credit cards, car payments, and student loans — to the point where you’re ridiculed if you don’t have this bondage in your life?  Frugal Dad discusses this in what he calls The “But Everyone Has A…” Mentality.

Do you want to learn about economics, finances, investing and day trading?  Best Forex Brokers lists 50 Free Open Courseware Classes for Investors and Day Traders.

Christian Personal Finance talks about Major Money Mistakes: Paying Too Much For A Car.

The Wisdom Journal gives us a few links to educate us on economics.

No Debt Plan gives us advice on how to Cut Monthly Costs by Asking for a Discount.

Weakonomics gives us The Pros and Cons of the Income Tax, with a great link to a graph of the world’s income tax rates.

Stretchy Dollar says It Doesn’t Matter How Much You Make, but what you do with what you have.  Judging by his examples of the numerous pro athletes and lottery winners that are again broke after their big paydays, I’d say he has a point!

Fiscal Fizzle gives us 10 Reasons Why Budgets Fail.

Links O' The Week

Subscribe to Blog Feeds

Read Blog Feeds at Google Reader

How many blogs do you keep track of?  Currently I have 78 blog feeds that I read.  If you are new to the blog reading thing, I suggest using Google Reader or a similar program.  These allow you to combine all your blog subscriptions into one program.  This consolidation allows you to relax and read, rather than try to remember each individual blog’s website address and check them daily.  It’s like creating your own personalized magazine or newspaper!

RSS Feed

Any where you see “RSS” or its usually-orange logo (see above), you can add that feed to your Reader.  My RSS feed is available on the site’s right margin; or, you can subscribe via e-mail.

Links O’ The (Mid-)Week

Here’s some more articles I found interesting enough to pass along to you:

Blog Talk Radio

If you’re into podcasts, some fellow Personal Finance bloggers host their own internet radio show:

• Get Rich Slowly & Bargaineering co-host Personal Finance Hour.  Their inaugural show was this week – go check it out!
• Frugal Upstate & Being Frugal co-host Frugal Coast 2 Coast.  Jenn & Lynnae put on a great show.

Family

Simple Marriage gives us 20 Must-Read Blogs for Married People.

Cash Money Life provides a guest post by Neal of Wealth Pilgrim on Creating a Financial Continuation Plan for Your Family.

Money Mate Kate talks Unmarried Couples: Borrowing/Lending.

Fiscal Fizzle recommends Using A Monthly Report To Discuss Money With Your Spouse.  I’m looking forward to seeing a template of his report.

Technology/Software

The Simple Dollar gives us 10 iPhone & iTouch Applications For Personal Finance Success.

Christian PF proclaims The 23 Best Freeware Programs For Windows.

Investing

Everything Finance gives us the 10 Investing Habits of Rich People.

Prime Time Money shows us 5 Reasons NOT To Borrow From Your 401k.

Links O' The Week