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Overwined posted:Yes, and I was purposely using the wrong word to highlight the extent of my indiscretions. That's the story I'm going with. Seriously, I was having a major league brain block on that and was getting pissed at the spell checker for not recognizing it. I blame it on not enough coffee and a stubborn belief that I'm always right even when I'm horribly wrong. If you ever get a letter that says that an account is paid and has a zero balance, save that letter the rest of your life. Laminate it if you have to. You're right, these things have a habit of popping on at the worst possible times. They buy and sell these old debts for pennies on the dollar. Each new place that buys it puts it on your bureau. Sometimes it is incompetence, someone didn't update the file. Sometimes I think it is malicious and they buy debts that they know are paid and figure some people will be too scared or forgetful and pay a debt that they already paid.
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Jan 31, 2011 23:18
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Credit Karma is referred to as a FAKO, not a FICO. Check creditboards.com for all of the credit information you will ever need. Don't forget, scores don't pay bills.
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Feb 1, 2011 00:55
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I just got a letter in the mail stating I can pay 40% ($260) of the $650 I owe, from an ambulance ride to the hospital in 2007, if I do it in the next 30 days. This sounds great. Any reason not to do it?
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Feb 1, 2011 01:25
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rock2much posted:I just got a letter in the mail stating I can pay 40% ($260) of the $650 I owe, from an ambulance ride to the hospital in 2007, if I do it in the next 30 days. This sounds great. Any reason not to do it? Is it on your credit report? Get a Pay For Delete.
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Feb 1, 2011 02:46
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traveling midget posted:Is it on your credit report? Get a Pay For Delete. Yea it's on. Googled Pay For Delete. Do you think I can get that with the reduced fee?
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Feb 1, 2011 03:59
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rock2much posted:Yea it's on. Googled Pay For Delete. Do you think I can get that with the reduced fee? Ask for it. The worst they can say is no, right?
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Feb 1, 2011 15:54
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I'm sick of Bank of America's nonsense fees, low interest rates, and terrible service. I want to switch to Ally for my checking/money market/CD's. Is there anything wrong with Ally? It looks pretty legitimate to me.
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Feb 1, 2011 17:25
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Zeta Taskforce posted:With Creditkarma, you can get a free Transunion report and actual FICO score, no strings attached. Most financial institutions report to all 3 bureaus so assuming the data is the same going into all 3, they shouldn’t be that far off. As you probably have been doing, you are entitled to free reports from https://www.annualcreditreport.com and there you can at least check up on the accuracy of the data. If you are needing to do a major purchase in the near future, you may want to buy your score from Equifax (don’t bother with buying the score from Experian, for some reason they don’t give FICO scores to consumers). But other than that, if the last blemish was years ago, you have not been opening new accounts, and your balances are low, your credit is probably at least workable, even if it isn’t excellent yet. Does anyone know of a full credit report, non monthly charge place that isnt annualcreditreport.com ? They require snail mailing a bunch of requests if you're military, and that's just annoying. I'll pay for something instant.
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Feb 1, 2011 22:26
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Hey everyone, first time I've posted in this thread/forum. I'm 21, in the military and have pretty few bills. I have 2 grand in savings, a $350 credit card balance with 0 APR, and then internet/cell phone/car. My car payment is about $102 a month and insurance is $138. My car payment has 2802 left and it was a 36 month. The worst part is the 13.44 interest on it. I'm about to get 1300 back in taxes and I want to start investing in retirement. I'd like to get a Roth IRA started through USAA. I don't really know much about them, other than to max my yearly investments and it'll pay out well at the end. But how should I break up the investments? Or should I just kill my car payment? I'm not too concerned with it because I'll get a raise about 1/2 through on top of the extra money I'll make during deployment.
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Feb 1, 2011 23:07
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Consummate Professional posted:Hey everyone, first time I've posted in this thread/forum. Kill the car loan as no reasonable investment is going to get a 13% return in the long run.
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Feb 1, 2011 23:26
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Yeah, it's probably best to kill the car loan with such a high interest rate. For anybody else out there waiting to start a Roth, know that you can still contribute to your Roth for 2010 (until April 15th, I believe). Then you have the rest of the year to max out your 2011 contribution.
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Feb 1, 2011 23:54
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Howdy. I'm looking for some opinions. I read (and thoroughly) enjoyed Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes. Per the usual financial recommendations, I have a $1000 emergency fund in a separate savings account. I also have about 13k in credit card debt. The authors of that book state the following: dat book posted:1) Do you have emergency or other nonretirement savings? This makes sense to me. Can anybody think of a reason not to do it? I could slash a 12.9% APR card down to $700 right this second, knowing that if I have a true, dire emergency, I can just unfreeze it (I can pay my rent with a credit card). I can't remember the last time I purchased anything on a credit card*, so I wouldn't use the pay-down as an excuse to use it. *My CC debt was racked up when I was younger, dumber, helping dad with his emergency bills, and engaged to an unemployed little thing. Also, I'm moving from RI to NV soon. I see it as kind of a "Life Reboot" and I've sold/trashed most possessions that didn't involve the Internet or rock climbing. I'm undecided on what to do with my car. I have two options: sell it here and buy something else in NV, or ship it to NV (I'm flying out there). It's a 1998 Mercury Tracer. 125K miles. The car's not fancy, but it runs well, recently passed its annual RI safety inspection, and in general has been a perfectly serviceable car for 2.5 years, getting me through 3 pain-in-the-rear end New England winters without fail. I'll live 2 miles from work, so I'll probably run/bike to work as often as I'll drive, and I don't need a fancy car. Someday I'll buy my dream car (an orange Honda Element) but that'll wait until I've paid off those credit cards and saved up cash for it. If I sell it, I figure I could get $1500 or so. That plus the money I'd allocated for shipping would give me $2000 to spend on a beater out there, with a $500 cushion to get it tuned up right away. If I ship it, then I'm spending $1000 to ship a car worth $1500, but at least I know it's a decent enough car that's been regularly serviced for the past 2.5 years. Initially I was going to sell, but now my gut tells me to ship it. What do you guys think?
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Feb 2, 2011 07:02
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I hope this is an appropriate thread for a question from my Finance homework. The above image is from the solutions manual. Can someone please tell me how they got the IRR / Expected Rate of Return of 24.63%? Thank you.
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Feb 3, 2011 22:45
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It'd be funny if this thread ends up a Finance homework help thread.Busy Bee posted:I hope this is an appropriate thread for a question from my Finance homework. Are you asking how to actually solve the equation to get 24.63 or do you not understand the solution equation? If the former, you can use something like Solver in Excel to solve for it. If the latter, it's basically 2.5/(1+x) + 2.5/(1+x)^2 + 126/(1+x)^3 = 70 i.e. Converting the future cash flows to match present stock price where you solve for x.
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Feb 3, 2011 23:29
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shrike82 posted:It'd be funny if this thread ends up a Finance homework help thread. It is the latter, thank you. I believe you missed a 2.5/(1+x)^3 in your equation. However, during the midterm when we won't have access to excel, how would I solve for X? Could I use a function on my TI-83? Thank you.
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Feb 3, 2011 23:43
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Busy Bee posted:It is the latter, thank you. I believe you missed a 2.5/(1+x)^3 in your equation. However, during the midterm when we won't have access to excel, how would I solve for X? Could I use a function on my TI-83? Thank you. I'm pretty sure you can, but I don't have mine accessable right now. I'll check when I get home and edit this post if I can help. edit - Unfortunately, both my TI-83's batteries are out and I don't have replacements. I'm sure there is a way to calculate IRR though. |Ziggy| fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Feb 4, 2011 |
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Feb 3, 2011 23:45
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TheShineNSB posted:Howdy. I'm looking for some opinions. I don’t agree with Dave Ramsey on everything, but I do agree with him here. The reality is that paying off debt is more than math, it is about behavior, and this is something that took me a long time to figure out too, but he’s right. I thought the same thing as you, or at least those authors, that when I get paid I should throw a huge chunk on my card, throw 100% at it, and if I have to use it at the end of the week to buy something essential that I was going to buy anyway, then I would just use it, and as long as I spend less than I pay, the balance will go down. Why have any money in the bank earning 1% when you have a credit card at 9.9%? Seems dumb. Right? The fact is that you are continuing bad habits. You are borrowing money whenever you want something, and that is so easy to do. And I’m not saying you will buy junk with it either. But when you have zero money in the bank except your most recent paycheck, you all but guarantee using the card just to eat. You are always reaching for plastic. When you have $1000 in the bank, it feels different when you spend $400 and suddenly you have $600 than if you have a balance of $13,000 and spend the same $400 and now you have a balance of $13,400. Would you even feel the latter? If you are tired and lazy and trying to decide to cook or order out, you might cook if you feel the 40% hole in your savings but be tempted to order out if you debt increased by 3%. And you would be normal if you did. But the interest rate? NOT THE INTEREST RATE! The secret is that interest rates don’t matter that much. They matter, but not like people think they do. Say you had $1000 earning 1% and your card was 12.9%, you are barely talking about $10 a month. Paying an extra $10 per month is not what’s keeping you in debt. And since you will be using the card from time to time, you will probably be saving more like $5. But having a little cushion there that prevents you always reaching for plastic and forcing you to be intentional how you spend your money, that will allow you to buy that book 100 times over. As for the car, I don’t know, I guess you could ask A/I, but as someone who grew up in Vermont and lives in Boston, something that old with that many miles is being held together with rust and a prayer. Anything you buy out there has never had to trudge through that 3 inch layer of that brown sandy, salty slush that lives on our roads for 4 months every year. But I doubt you could get $1500 for it.
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Feb 4, 2011 00:01
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Busy Bee posted:It is the latter, thank you. I believe you missed a 2.5/(1+x)^3 in your equation. However, during the midterm when we won't have access to excel, how would I solve for X? Could I use a function on my TI-83? Thank you. - Math-> Solver (it's the 0 button) - rewrite your equation to be 0= blah blah blah, type that into the equation section and press enter - enter a guess for x (make it appropriate or it'll give you an error that says "Bad Guess"... seriously, this is the worst solver program) - press 2nd->Enter, and it'll solve after a few seconds of thinking and replace your guess with the correct answer. You have to be on the equation line or on the x= line for this to work. You can't edit your equation without a guess for x entered in. Sometimes the answer will be 7 and it will give you 6.9999999... If there are multiple answers it will usually give you the one closest to the x value you guess, but sometimes not. It's quite buggy but get used to it and you should be fine. You can also just graph it under Y= and use the calc button to find the x-intercepts which will then be the solutions of the equation... this is essentially what the solver program is doing for you.
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Feb 4, 2011 01:04
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Zeta Taskforce posted:When I get paid I should throw a huge chunk on my card, throw 100% at it, and if I have to use it at the end of the week to buy something essential that I was going to buy anyway, then I would just use it, and as long as I spend less than I pay, the balance will go down. I'm talking about an emergency fund that sits in a separate savings account. This isn't "rainy day" money for paying insurance deductibles or making up for a slow sales month, or whatever (I account for that stuff separately). This is "true, dire emergency" money. Like, if lose my job next week and I need $1000 for the termination clause in my lease so that I can move in with my mom, or something like that. This isn't even money intended for unexpected vet bills, or car maintenance/repairs. Those aren't emergencies, they're annoying things that I know will happen at some point, so I save up for them ahead of time. I never said anything about being on a super tight budget, or that this action would put me on one. I make this month's budget using last month's paychecks (i.e. money I already have, not money I plan to acquire), so my checking account has two (or sometimes 3) full paychecks in it at the start and end of each month, plus whatever money I've budgeted toward those future annoying expenses. I'm already budgeting considerable (but easily manageable) amounts of money at paying down that 13K debt (enough to pay it off in a few years), and I've saved the emergency money (and the car money, and the moving expense money) while doing so. tl:dr I don't rely on this stashed $1000 for any day-to-day expenses, or even for "annoying" unexpected expenses. My checking account has enough money to handle all of my budgeting needs, and the $1000 has zero impact on that. So, keeping my specific situation in mind, do you see a downside to spending that $1000 on a credit card pay-down? quote:As for the car, I don’t know, I guess you could ask A/I, but as someone who grew up in Vermont and lives in Boston, something that old with that many miles is being held together with rust and a prayer. Anything you buy out there has never had to trudge through that 3 inch layer of that brown sandy, salty slush that lives on our roads for 4 months every year. But I doubt you could get $1500 for it. The best- and worst-case scenarios for shipping versus selling are pretty much the same. Best: My shipped or purchased car that lasts a few years, after which point my budget plan has me out of CC debt (or close to it) and I can easily afford a shinier car if I want one. Worst: My shipped or purchased car goes to poo poo after one day, and costs more to fix than it's worth. Whatever money I spent on either option is down the tubes. I walk, bike, bus, or carpool to work and around town while I save up cash to buy another car (this wouldn't require my emergency fund). So the question basically comes down to: do I feel better with the high-mileage beater that's been driven in lovely cold weather, but I know currently runs well; or with the high-mileage beater that's been in desert weather and is a complete unknown to me? My gut feeling currently favors the former, and the worst case scenario has me shrugging and dealing with it.
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Feb 4, 2011 03:44
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Why do you have to ship it? Why can't you drive it or tow it behind your moving van?
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Feb 4, 2011 05:36
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Mobius posted:Why do you have to ship it? Why can't you drive it or tow it behind your moving van? quote:I'm undecided on what to do with my car. I have two options: sell it here and buy something else in NV, or ship it to NV (I'm flying out there).
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Feb 4, 2011 05:48
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But why fly? Drive a moving van and tow the car. Save the cost of the plane ticket and the car shipping in exchange for the price of gas.
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Feb 4, 2011 06:13
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It would be several thousand more to drive, whether driving my car or a moving truck. It's $1400 to fly, ship, and have a rental car for a week while I wait for my car to show up. If I drove, I'd pay for gas, lodging, shipping, wear and tear on my car (or truck rental fees), and I'd miss a week of work.
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Feb 4, 2011 06:48
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I am in need of some investing advice. I am starting to save for a house and want to save to have the 20% down payment and some for closing cost I currently have $5,000 saved up for a down payment on a house, but since that is far below the $34,000 I need for my down payment (with closing costs) I would like to invest this but I need the following from it: -Allowed to deposit money at any time (looking to direct deposit set amount from paycheck plus extra I have left over every month) -A decent APR (something better than the .25 cents I am getting right now from it sitting in a regular savings account) -The ability to take some money out in case of extreme emergency
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Feb 4, 2011 11:53
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Dbhjed posted:I am in need of some investing advice. Anything you want to access in 5 years or less should only be in a savings account or CD, but you want monthly deposits so savings. Still, you can get rates upwards of 1.3% on those. Or a rewards checking if you want to deal with the hoops. Unless you are fine with needing to access it and it has lost 10% of its value.
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Feb 4, 2011 12:55
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Chin Strap posted:Anything you want to access in 5 years or less should only be in a savings account or CD, but you want monthly deposits so savings. Still, you can get rates upwards of 1.3% on those. Or a rewards checking if you want to deal with the hoops. Unless you are fine with needing to access it and it has lost 10% of its value. I am really only looking for anything that is going to make me some money with it. I am going to be loosing money buying a house a few years from now I want to make this money work for me now.
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Feb 4, 2011 15:03
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Dbhjed posted:I am really only looking for anything that is going to make me some money with it. I am going to be loosing money buying a house a few years from now I want to make this money work for me now. Then you want very lucrative investments that will either make you a lot of money or lose it all. From general advice around here, that's like making a list of stocks and throwing darts and hoping.
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Feb 4, 2011 16:14
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Dbhjed posted:I am really only looking for anything that is going to make me some money with it. I am going to be loosing money buying a house a few years from now I want to make this money work for me now. A 5 year time horizon is too short to earn much (in this economy) if you want to be reasonably sure you'll have it at the end. Stock / bond investment or speculation isn't for money that you can't afford to lose. Plugging away with an online savings account is probably the best bet. SmartyPig and ING get mentioned the most in here. You'll earn slightly more than you will with a brick and mortar bank but you definitely won't be raking in 8% returns or anything. Depending on how much you can save per month, though, your 5 year goal could still be fine.
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Feb 4, 2011 18:48
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Is it true that the credit card reports the balance on your statement to places like Equifax, even if you pay your balance in full every month? I pay my CC fully every month (I get the statement and immediately pay it off). I just checked my credit report for free (the once annually thing) and it showed that I had a $750 or so balance and a high debt-to-credit ratio. This pissed me off, because I thought that paying it in full every month was supposed to help my score and I figured I'd have a 0% d/c ratio. I thought this was an error, but after some googling I ran across some other people saying they 'pay off their credit card before the statement hits so it reports a $0 balance and ups their score slightly', whenever they're going to apply for a loan or something. So this is actually how it works? I know I've been saving myself paying a ridiculous interest rate by not carrying a balance from month to month, but I figured it would be doing a lot to help my credit score. 
AndrewP fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Feb 5, 2011 |
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Feb 5, 2011 00:00
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The solution is not to try to game the system by paying it off at the exact right day so you can max out your score at one particular instant. The solution is to increase your credit limit so that you can never hit a high used:available credit ratio. Call your card and ask if they'll raise the limit. If you have 5 or 10 times as much credit as you use every month, you will never have to worry about this problem. Also: who cares? Are you applying for a mortgage in the next month? Responsible credit use will increase your score in the long term even if you're not at PEAK MAX CREDIT SCORE this very second.
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Feb 5, 2011 00:12
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moana posted:The solution is not to try to game the system by paying it off at the exact right day so you can max out your score at one particular instant. The solution is to increase your credit limit so that you can never hit a high used:available credit ratio. Call your card and ask if they'll raise the limit. If you have 5 or 10 times as much credit as you use every month, you will never have to worry about this problem. If you only have one card, think about getting a second card with no maintenance fees. You hold this one around to raise total credit and show you don't owe on all accounts.
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Feb 5, 2011 00:35
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Thanks for the responses! No mortgage or anything on the immediate horizon, but the reason I even wanted to know was because I want to get a new card (current is a Discover, PenFed has better rewards and is actually a Visa so I can use it anywhere). This is why I've never asked to up my credit limit - it's a hard pull and I figured I'd get a new one soon anyway. They did it once I suppose I should have just done it a while ago in light of this information, though. Not planning on closing the Discover card, by the way, as I've heard many times that's a bad idea.
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Feb 5, 2011 01:08
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I started budgeting about a month ago having never done anything of the sort before and this month after i paid my rent i have twice as much money left over as I usually do. I used the Moneywell app on mac and iphone and it is based on envelope budgeting and it works great!
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Feb 5, 2011 05:24
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I'm 3 years out from my last job and have yet to do a direct rollover from my SAR SEP account to a Roth IRA. To date, I've followed the recommendations made by the various brokers managing these funds with middling success. Recently I began reading David Swensen's Unconventional Success and am interested in being more actively involved in my own financial planning but am grounded enough to know that I know very little. Vanguard seems pretty popular around here, but is there any merit to going with a discount brokerage (ie Scottrade, eTrade) instead? I'd like to have the most long-term flexibility to build a diverse portfolio but, like I said, I've got a lot of ground to cover.
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Feb 7, 2011 08:35
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Noggin Monkey posted:I'm 3 years out from my last job and have yet to do a direct rollover from my SAR SEP account to a Roth IRA. To date, I've followed the recommendations made by the various brokers managing these funds with middling success. Recently I began reading David Swensen's Unconventional Success and am interested in being more actively involved in my own financial planning but am grounded enough to know that I know very little. The Swensen book gets my highest recommendation as a top investment book. It's great that you are reading it. Going with a discount brokerage is a fine idea, and a great way to build a longterm all-ETF portfolio. And you have the flexibility of choosing any brokerage that you want. Of course, Vanguard is still in the running as a brokerage... They offer free trades on Vanguard ETF's and reasonable commissions on non-Vanguard ETF's.
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Feb 7, 2011 09:44
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I'm looking to play around with a couple hundred bucks in the stock market, doing some trading online, moving money around quite a bit just to play with the market and get a feel for things before I do any big investing down the road. I was thinking about Etrade. Is this recommended, or are there better alternatives? Also, one question about a policy in their accounts:quote:
Does this mean that before the 60-day mark, I either have to deposit to Etrade $500, or buy $500 worth of investments through Etrade? One other question. Because of the work I do, I have no options for a work-sponsored retirement program, leaving me to fend for myself for retirement. Is there a resource I should look into to start to piece together some ideas of what I should be looking in to? I'm 25 and have no significant retirement savings. I know a little bit about IRA's, mutual funds, and what-not, but not enough that I feel comfortable deciding on a retirement investment plan at this point. I have $0 debt, minus student loans. PRADA SLUT fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Feb 9, 2011 |
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Feb 9, 2011 07:08
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I believe that 60 day thing just means that you need to deposit $500, you don't necessarily need to invest it. If you don't invest, it'll sit in whatever Etrade savings account type you select, earning interest. Keep in mind that after your "free trade" period is up, you'll be getting charged $9.99 commission on all of your trades, and if you're trading small amounts it will eat through your money really quickly. I personally use Etrade, but I haven't used anything else so can't really make a recommendation based on comparison. If you just want to get a feel for things, you might be better off paper trading for a while first. For your retirement question, you'll find a lot of info and resources over in this thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2892928 One solution would be to open an IRA or Roth IRA somewhere that has "target date retirement funds" for you to throw your money into immediately and have it investing on autopilot. Then, you'll have the option to take more control of allocations later on as you get more comfortable, and you won't have missed out on funding your IRA for the current tax year.
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Feb 10, 2011 02:56
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Or, if you wanted to kill two birds with one stone, you could sign up for a Roth IRA at Etrade, which will have no minimum funding requirement and free trades for 30 days. Then you could throw in a couple hundred and get a feel for things. The downside would be that you can't withdraw any profit you make in that account.
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Feb 10, 2011 03:26
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I have a Fidelity 401K with a couple hundred from an old job of mine. Should I be doing anything with it, seeing as how I'm not going to get any more deposits into it from my company?
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Feb 10, 2011 04:01
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PRADA SLUT posted:I have a Fidelity 401K with a couple hundred from an old job of mine. Should I be doing anything with it, seeing as how I'm not going to get any more deposits into it from my company? When did you leave the job? You can leave it there if they let you, and they pay the maintenance fees. Usually they just send you a check if it's that low of an amount so they don't have to. You could roll it to an ira..............
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Feb 10, 2011 14:13
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