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Under the "How do I get rid of debt or start investing" section there's only investment, so here's a pretty universally recommended method of getting out of debt: The Debt Snowball The principle is to stop everything except minimum payments and focus on one thing at a time. Otherwise, nothing gets accomplished because all your effort is diluted. First accumulate $1,000 cash as an emergency fund. Then begin intensely getting rid of all debt (except the house) using the debt snowball plan. List your debts in order with the smallest payoff or balance first. Do not be concerned with interest rates or terms unless two debts have similar payoffs, then list the higher interest rate debt first. Paying the little debts off first gives you quick feedback, and you are more likely to stay with the plan.
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Jan 20, 2010 18:48
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GET. EVERYTHING. IN. WRITING. Don't talk to them on the phone ever again. Send everything certified mail. Google and/or check other threads for "Pay for Delete".
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Jul 20, 2010 01:55
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Beatladdius posted:I picked up "The Intelligent Investor" from the library and it seems to be, well, a bit over my head/past the point I'm at. The only Finance experience I have is from an incredibly basic Financial Management course I took in High School. What topics are you interested in? Budgeting, Saving/Spending management? Investing? Retirement?
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Aug 18, 2010 13:31
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Vested for 180 days means if you withdraw from the 401k within 180 days, you lose some/all of the company match.
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Nov 10, 2010 13:45
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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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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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Zeta Taskforce posted:Those sound good. I listen to Thirding Planet Money, and I listen to Ramsey but only because I can ignore the "Obama bad, Jesus good" rambling he tends to do.
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Apr 7, 2011 18:53
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Zeta Taskforce posted:He gets a lot of flack for praising Jesus. I give him a pass on that. He is never in anyone’s face about it, and doesn’t bring up his spirituality to anyone unless they self identify as Christian. But if they do, he can communicate to a caller using certain concepts and terminology in a way that cuts directly to their heart. Obama is bad in his world, but it’s not like he heaps praise on the Republican leadership either. He is no Rush Limbaugh. I completely agree with you, I was just throwing that out there because Ramsey can definitely turn a lot of people off with some of his political/religious commentary. He's a good listen for common sense finance.
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Apr 7, 2011 20:34
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A note regarding Mint and Navy Federal: NFCU reports the "Current Balance" to Mint, not the "Available Balance". This means your balance will be higher than your actual funds (the higher value being the sum of any Pending transactions). It's a bit annoying.
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Apr 7, 2011 23:25
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One of the oldest budgeting tips: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." -Dickens Get your paycheck, pay all obligations first, and manage discretionary (entertainment, shopping, etc) spending wisely.
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Apr 12, 2011 19:45
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Bojanglesworth posted:Clearly you have a personal vendetta against leasing, not everybody who leases a car has made the worst decision of their life. Did leasing kill your grandpa or something? You just went from 'foolish' to 'rear end in a top hat' FWIW.
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May 2, 2011 17:52
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Your foolishness didn't start with the lease.
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May 2, 2011 17:58
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modig posted:Yeah that's right, ohh well. If you're paying the whole loan with cash, you should be adult enough to tell your dad "I can afford the car I would like to purchase, and will be purchasing it." Don't be a child and play games with your loan, grow a pair and tell the truth.
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May 5, 2011 16:52
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modig posted:Yeah I know, the bit with "my dad" was my imagination of what I would say to try to get a mad discount. This was a hypothetical: is this scheme doomed to failure and probably illegal? question, rather than an actual question. Doomed to fail? Yes Illegal? No If you can 'con'vince them to give you a low principle high-interest loan, awesome. Just make sure there's no penalty for early repayment.
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May 6, 2011 15:43
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The Barclay card is awful and designed for people who can't afford a MacBook to get one on lovely credit terms. You can get a much better credit card elsewhere, if that's what you really want. How much do you have in savings? That will determine whether I suggest you spend from that, or just save up. In reality, just save up. Do you want to wait (a month and a half, which is nothing) to buy your MacBook outright, or have to pay it off from a credit card, loan, etc?
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May 7, 2011 21:32
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dunkman posted:I got LASIK last year, financed about $2850 of it, 2 years no interest. I just finished paying it off yesterday (9 months ahead of schedule!). The financing came from GEMoney. What do I do now? I turned off AutoPay, but I have no plans on getting more elective surgery with which to use this credit line. Should I just let it sit? Close it? Call them and do something? If there are no fees associated with the account (yearly, maintenance, inactivity, etc), just let it sit as an open credit line. It won't hurt you to have it at $0.
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May 27, 2011 16:15
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Zeta Taskforce posted:I have to disagree. I don’t care what you do, but whatever (minimal) boost you will get from your credit is not worth having an extra account out there. It is another account that can get compromised, another account that’s going to generate junk mail, another account that you have to keep track of. What if there is a clause somewhere in there that there is an inactivity fee, or they decide to start charging annual fees, and since you never use it you don’t give them your new address and phone number so you don’t realize it until they send it to collections? I would close it. Don’t worry, even if you close it someone else will be more than happy to let you finance something else if you so desire in the future. I can't say you're incorrect, even though I don't necessarily agree.
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May 27, 2011 20:40
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Zeta Taskforce posted:This is what I hate about FICO because they are constantly tweaking the algorithm, and it’s like a mysterious black box that spits out a number, but one of the recent changes means that an account with no activity for 6 months doesn’t get scored the same way as one you are actively using. I don’t want to say it is ignored, but I don’t help your credit as much. So I guess in this stupid cat and mouse game between FICO and the people trying to outsmart FICO, people will begin to use all their zero balance cards exactly once every six months. That change to FICO makes you the 'more right' one, I'd say. We're still friends. 
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May 27, 2011 23:14
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Re: YNAB: I use an on-budget "Pre-Budget" fake bank account with a couple months of paychecks sitting in it. When they actually hit my bank account, I move them to the real account.
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Apr 7, 2013 14:40
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Boris Galerkin posted:This isn't really so elegant, but what can you do. I guess the point of budgeting is that you stick to it and not shift money around, but for example in this case going out to a bar and to a restaurant with friends is still "fun" money and I really don't care how it's split as long as I stay under the overall $200 budgeted. For tracking purposes though, I want these two split so I can see how much I ate out vs drank for example. Mint actually handles that nicely -- you can budget for the Parent category and the Children categories track individually but deduct from the Parent.
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Apr 8, 2013 16:26
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It's backed by a real bank. It's a startup that put together the web UI and 'experience' of Simple. No catch, really.
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Aug 12, 2013 12:51
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What are the minimum payments on everything, and also the interest rates on your cars and her grad loans? I'll edit the rest of this once you post those figures. ------------------------------------------------------- I'd kill that Macbook credit card now, out of savings, to make sure you don't get whacked with retroactive interest. Then I'd snowball it, so based on what you have posted (cars/grad loans may change this): Pay the minimum on all of your loans. Then target one specific loan, and throw as much money as you can at it, until it's gone, in this order: Sallie Mae: $5,566.0 at 6.8% Ed Financial: $1860 at 5.65% Ed Financial: $13,045 at 5.65% Great Lake loans: $2500 at 1.75%
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Aug 12, 2013 16:09
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Primerica, Inc. is a multi-level marketing company[6] which sells financial products and services using a hybrid model of direct selling, franchising and distribution. So... yeah, a scam.
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Sep 6, 2013 00:39
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Cancel the purchase? How would getting a credit card do anything if you already paid for it? Divorce?
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Sep 9, 2013 21:01
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Sorry the answer to "How do I best loan money to my girlfriend?" is "Don't". Lose your lovely attitude  vvv Any time. lament.cfg fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 15:39
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Zeta Taskforce posted:Edited out Oh, gently caress you, it was funny. [Zeta posted a shaggy dog version of "save a bunch of money, blah blah, some day it'll be alimony"] To be serious: Loaning a bunch of money to your girlfriend is inherently an E/N subject, not a business decision. Loaning money to family/friends never goes well. It creates inequality in the relationship and leads to mutual resentment for a plethora of reasons. Go to loving LegalZoom or something if you really want paperwork for 'a real loan', but don't come back in a year asking us to fix your budget because you're out a bunch of cash from your ex-girlfriend.
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Sep 23, 2013 16:45
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If that's what you want to do, I wholly support gifting her the money rather than "A FORMAL LOAN".
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Sep 23, 2013 16:52
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Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover
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Dec 4, 2013 14:22
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 The YNAB Phone app is like $3 but YNAB itself is $60. YNAB isn't the hammer to fix every budget nail with, people. The YNAB app is NOT GOOD for BUDGETING. It's good for entering transactions, and that is basically it. You can check your budget balances but it's not at all a robust app. I wouldn't recommend it as a standalone or nearly-standalone app. It's basically just good for entering transactions to YNAB on the fly, and then getting the whole picture on my desktop.
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Dec 19, 2013 14:51
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It used to cost money, IIRC. Glad it's free now, considering it requires the paid desktop app. I agree that YNAB itself is a fantastic tool for budgeting, but the guy above can only use a mobile app. In that scenario, the YNAB App isn't going to do the job. You literally suggested he "borrow a computer once a month".
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Dec 19, 2013 16:09
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Chin Strap posted:Can you still contribute to a 401k while you have a 401k loan out? Or can you not until it is paid back? Typically contributions continue as normal.
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Jan 2, 2014 00:46
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I had a long reply typed out discussing "Can I afford it" vs "Can I afford the payment" but in reality this is all I need to post:Radbot posted:incredibly retarded
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Jul 2, 2014 17:33
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totalnewbie posted:Seconding this. What's the saying? Wanting your Emergency Fund to have high returns is like wanting your Seatbelts to make your car go faster?
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Nov 17, 2014 17:51
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My girlfriend is still going through hell with Navient. They did not contact her to request renewal forms for her income-based repayment (despite all communication being paper and coming to our house), so her payment jumped to over $3,000 a few months ago. The first time this happened she requested A) they turn off autopay and B) they change her IBR for the next payment. They did not turn off autopay, and when she called the next time (prompted by her seeing the Autopay for $3xxx 'processing'), the support rep said "the last rep was incorrect, we cannot process IBR forms in under 30 days, so your payment is still $3xxx." She was able to have her bank stop payment, luckily. (Rant: If she only had $3,000 in the bank and needed to, say, pay rent, feed herself, put gas in the car to go to work, etc... she'd be ruined. That's hosed up.) She attempted to submit her repayment forms but has been completely ignored by the "Submit My Forms" group, and phone support has told her they're basically opaque -- they get your stuff and get back to you, or they don't. 30 days after every email she sends to them, she gets a bounceback notice that the email was never opened. She has gone through the process of contacting support, requesting deferment, and not getting deferment until the second attempt every month since this began. Every time she submitted the forms, she'd call back in 24-48 hours to see if the SMF group acted on them, and every time the answer was obviously "no". Finally she got her case escalated to someone who could actually provide support and their suggestion was to circumvent Navient altogether and submit her income documentation through the studentloans.gov site, who would then forward them to Navient. We have yet to see Navient reflect this, but she did get confirmation that her documentation was forwarded from studentloans.gov to Navient. Navient is loving garbage. lament.cfg fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 15:03
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cr0y posted:Ughhh son of a bitch i had a credit card for a dentist that i never went to get closed automatically with a zero balance and it cost me 40 pts on my report. Will opening a secured credit card (since i dont qualify for anything else) offset this change in my used to unused credit? Assuming i keep a 20pct balance on it? That 40 points washed away 2 years of gains Do Not Carry A Balance. It does not help in any meaningful way. There is nothing a credit counselor can do for you that you can't do yourself. Do you have open collections, a bad payment history..? What are your problems?
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Apr 8, 2015 14:33
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Alan Smithee posted:What’s the most a bank (bofa specifically) will let you overdraft? I have an idiot friend who is buying something he swears will payoff once his career takes off but he may not have the funds for days Bofa?
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Apr 6, 2019 02:59
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:36 |
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DarkHorse posted:Bofa deez nuts 
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Apr 6, 2019 14:54
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