Archive for the ‘Odds and Ends’ Category

I read a lot of financial press and liberally “borrow” from the best news and ideas to share here. (Imitation is the best form of flattery. And the best way to get sued.)

But anyway… I’ve been seeing a lot of great posts lately and wanted to share my treasures culled from the veritable bowels of the Internets.  So with no further ado, here is a fat Tuesday morning reading list to get you through to hump day.

• From Mint.com, 5 Things You Can Learn About Credit from Gangster Flicks.  I love mob movies and this article was both hilarious and 100% dead on.  (No pun intended.)
• Consumer debt actually rose in January and new car loans help fuel the uptick. Should You Buy a New Car or Lease It? The Dough Roller answers. And it doesn’t hurt that Toyota, in response to its recent troubles, is offerring door-buster deals all around.
• Find and Plug Your Money Leaks with this post from Bargaineering.
• Being Frugal.net has a great article for tax time called Roth IRAs for Beginners.
• Taking frugal to the extreme, MSN’s Smart Spending blog chronicled a couple who limited themselves to just $25 for a week of food shopping.
• From Debtbeat (awesome blog) is video of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show blowing up the credit card industry.
• Pay Off Debt AND Save for The Future at the Same Time is not impossible, according to MoneyCrashers.
• With less than a month under the new rules of the CARD Act, SmartMoney.com has already uncovered 10 Things Credit-Card Companies Won’t Say to help them skirt the new regs.
• The Wall Street Journal’s family finance blog tells you How to Fix Your Finances in 2010. I know that it’s already March, but my readers are very smart and can catch up, no problem. (On second thought, flattery is the best form of flattery.)

Enjoy.

By now you should be very familiar with Ann Minch, the woman who nearly brought Bank of America to its knees with a YouTube video.

Well not quite,  but she did get BofA to lower the rate on her credit card, which is a pretty keen accomplishment in its own right and probably all she wanted in the first place.

Ann became a short-lived media darling and hoped to leverage her exposure to start an anti-debt movement that failed to gain much traction, perhaps because its main vehicle was a poorly designed website with little information and no community or social networking elements.

And if she really wanted to get out of debt, she should have slapped some ads on the site. Google probably would have even served some up from Bank of America and the irony would have made the Internet implode.

But instead, with her 15 minutes just about up, our favorite debt revolutionary has apparently gone all Tea Party on us and is now railing against “the corruption, greed and tyranny that has our nation in a stranglehold” on a new website.

Calling for a “civil revolution” the site asks Americans to rage against:

• The totally-corrupt two-party system and
• Out-of-control government endangering our lives, our currency and our freedoms.

I think it’s smart for her to go up against the political parties and government; they are far less powerful than credit card companies.

Go visit her at RevoltStartsNow.com and get your fill of all mid-1990’s-era web design you can handle.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday and hopefully you are getting ready to stack up the nachos, chill down the beer and prepare to watch a great game with good friends. It would be a good time to get your mind off your financial problems and have a little fun, except for this article I read about super quarterback Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts.

If you have even a passing interest in professional football this piece from Slate is a fascinating look into what makes Manning so freakin’ amazing, and such a pain in the ass to work with.  To make a long story short, he cares more about football than everything else in his life combined and works harder than anyone else in the game to be perfect. Not great, but perfect. When it comes to football, Manning has an obsessive-compulsive personality and speaking to his family and teammates you can get more anecdotes than he has passing yards.

When he was just twelve, Manning pushed his Pop Warner teammates to block harder. He got to college six weeks early to work out with the upperclassmen. At home, he falls asleep with the remote in his hand after hours of breaking down custom game film.

Reading all of this got me to thinking… Do you care enough about knocking down your debt to approach it like Peyton Manning would?

It’s a fair question. Football provides Peyton Manning everything that is important to him in life while massive debt prevents you from enjoying everything that is important in life. And both paths are temporary. Football players have a limited window to compete before age and injury take hold while you want to envision a time when you are living debt-free. Until then you have to focus and deliver.

So imagine what this would look like. Are you willing to break down your credit card statements looking for irregularities? Badger your card companies into lowering your rates? Get to work early and stay late to jockey for a raise or promotion? How about cutting out your favorite entertainment to save money? I doubt that Petyon Manning is going to a lot of movies on Saturdays.

Manning memorized his team playbook in days. Do you even have one? It’s called a budget and without one you’re in the financial pee-wee leagues and you’ll never be debt free.

Manning also expects other people to treat the game as he does. When a teammate left practice early to be present at the birth of his daughter, Manning asked why he couldn’t have babies in the offseason.

Here I would say that your family is on your debt-reduction team and they need to know their roles and get behind you. Or in front of you, if they are your metaphorical O-line. Make sure that your spouse knows that you’re serious about debt reduction and you expect him or her to do their part to cut spending and pay more towards the bills. And the kids. Playtime is over if it means expensive clothes, toys and electronics. Explain what the goal is, that it’s only for a short period of time and that they are helping the family win.

So go an enjoy the Superbowl today and tomorrow be ready to wage war on those bills. (Not the Buffalo Bills. You know what I meant.)