DebtFREE-Revolution

No fancy theme for this week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction, as I just spent almost an hour on campus doing the academic advising thing so I can finally register for classes.  Yeah, a little late in the summer, but I had to figure out how to switch my major and my academic advisor and the college’s website does NOT make that an easy task.  It was so much easier to do when you had to go talk to a real person and fill out a paper form! 

Next step: registering for classes on “drop day” then paying the bill right afterwards.  “Drop day” is when the registrar drops everyone who hasn’t already paid their tuition bill from all their classes.  I’ve used “drop day” to get the classes I want at the times I want for five semesters running now, and it’s how I will get into two “full” classes for this fall.  The key is having ALL of the tuition money on hand before drop day, because at midnight each night the registrar drops anyone who isn’t paid in full or has a payment plan in place already.

Speaking of payment plans, let’s get this carnival started!  Here are my picks of the 18 posts that made the cut this week:

• Brainy from Pants in a Can writes about “Red Zone Finances” which is a football analogy for his level of motivation in eliminating his debts.  I like football, I LOVE killing off debt, so this one is a home run (to mix sports metaphors)
• Frederic Premji from I Need Motivation writes “How I Paid $25,000 in Debt Within 18 Months“  Nothing like a kick (donkey) success story to really help folks get fired up!
• Phil For Humanity has an idea that is not only near-and-dear to my heart, but one I wholeheartedly endorse: STOP USING YOUR CREDIT CARDS!  Seriously, give this one a good read.

Those three are my favorites, but the rest are definitely worth reading here:

• Hanna from College Finance 101 writes about Budgeting (part 3)
• RC from Think Your Way to Wealth wrote about Creating an Aggressive Credit Card Debt Elimination Plan
• Broke Grad Student is Paying off student loans by making money online
• Our Four Pence Worth discusses Resisting the urge to splurge
• Heather guest posts at the Happy Rock and lists 5 creative ways to reduce your debt
• The Money Answer Guy talks about why Store credit cards are a ripoff
• Discover Debt Freedom has 5 Simple solutions to save $500
• Silicon Valley Blogger asks “Your free credit score: Is there such a thing?“
• Debt Free warns about Mortgage Consolidation Loans: what to watch out for
• Gather Little By Little warns “Somebody is Watching You” in everything you do … even finances!
• Bible Money Matters goes straight to the horse’s mouth with Dave Ramsey explains why the Debt Snowball works (note: I used this method myself)
• J. Money from Budgets are Sexy recounts the smartest money advice I ever got (love the quote)
• Ryan from Debt Reduction Formula asks “Is bad news better than good news?” when it comes to pf blogging and comments
• Living Almost Large provides some commentary on the new credit card laws and a link for your input to the Fed
• Coupon Artist says “All this debt is complicating my life!”

And there we have yet another quality week for the Carnival of Debt Reduction!  Thanks to all the submitters for all the good reads.  Now it’s time for the reading and commenting to begin! :)  Meanwhile, I’ll be prowling the online class schedule and plotting out which class I want to take at what time for the fall semester.

Welcome to the 139th Carnival of Debt Reduction, the Debtors’ Prison edition.  We may not have debtors’ prisons any more, but there is still Credit Hell!  According to wikipedia, a debtors’ prison was a prison for those who are unable to pay a debt.  The first category for today are the progress reports of those definitely not headed to debtors’ prisons:

• Chief Family Officer says “Our car loan is officially paid off - in less than two months!” proof that the next best thing to paying all-out cash is to have an EXTREMELY SHORT loan.
• Nathaniel Scott offers up his progress report for month 4 of his debt reduction battle.
• FMF says that contrary to popular belief, he has a great credit score with no debt.  So much for that excuse to stay in debt!
• Amanda has her economic stimulus payment, and provides an update and a question in Me vs Debt: Debt Repayment Update - How Should I Proceed?

“Prior to the mid 19th century debtors’ prisons were a common way to deal with unpaid debt.”  Sounds scary, doesn’t it?  Fortunately, we have better, non-incarceratory ways of dealing with debt today!

• Michael Geoffrey presents How to Get Out Of Debt
• billspaced presents Getting Out of Debt, Part 3
• Debt Freedom Fighter presents Snowballing Debt: How to Make Bigger Payments To Your Creditors Without Making More Money

“In the United Kingdom, the Debtors Act of 1869 abolished imprisonment for debt, although debtors who had the means to pay their debt but did not do so, could still be incarcerated for up to six weeks.”  Student loan debt lasts much much longer…

• William Blake presents Getting Help Paying Off Student Debt
• nickel presents Thoughts on Minimizing Debt While in College
• Destroy Debt writes Learning to Spend Less So My Earnings Are Greater
• The Happy Rock presents Demystifying The Budget - Don’t Be Afraid
• debbie presents 8 Ways You Blow the Most Money

“In 1833 the United States reduced the practice of imprisonment for debts at the federal level. Most states followed suit.”  The state versus federal dynamic in American government makes some interesting legal situations, which brings us to credit cards:

• Christopher Johnson presents Getting A Handle On Your Credit Cards
• Maria O’Brien presents Dealing with Credit Card Debt
• Brice Hogan presents 3 Steps to a Lower Interest Rate
• Ray presents Debt Reduction With Low Interest Balance Transfer Credit Cards
• J. Savings presents Budgets are Sexy.: Credit Cards are cool

“The Province of Georgia in the colonial United States, was originally intended to be settled by debtors.”  I found this little tidbit quite amusing!

• Chris Kakaras presents Situation Analysis - debt statistics
• The Baglady presents The Nuances of Good and Bad Debt
• Mike Leonard presents Debt by Stealth – this is the cause of your Debt
• paidtwice presents “Emergencies” Happen A Lot More Often Than I Ever Thought

“Debtors’ prisons varied in the amount of freedom they allowed the debtor. With a little money, a debtor could pay for some freedoms; some allowed inmates to conduct business and receive visitors; others  even allowed inmates to live a short distance outside the prison–a practice known as the ‘Liberty of the Rules’”

• Stephan Grindley presents Debt Consolidation: The Scare Tactics
• Alexander presents How to Stop Collection Calls
• MITBeta presents Using a Twice Yearly Pay Bonus to Meet Your Goals
• Jason presents Should I Stop 401(k) Contributions to Pay Off Debt?

Whew!  That’s a lot of quality entries this time around!  I do hope y’all enjoyed the fun with the debtors’ prison theme and be sure to read these great posts on reducing or eliminating debt.

Just some odds and ends this morning.  The beautiful weather we had yesterday didn’t last as storms rolled in last night, but at least this time there are no limbs down nor damage to the property here!  The news says Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas got hit yet again with tornadoes, so I plan to donate a bit to the Red Cross tomorrow, including a pint of blood if I have tomorrow night off work.  I’d love it if those of y’all here in the States would join me on this.

Carnival of Financial Goals Readers’ Choice(s)

I didn’t get a whole lot of response on this (?) so the Readers’ Choice was a four-way tie.  Here are the four financial goals posts that got votes from last week’s Carnival of Financial Goals:

• The Zen and Art of Coupon Clipping from Nicole at Breaking Even
• Create Your Own Dollar Plan: Step 1 from Madison at My Dollar Plan
• Making Goals Adaptable from Brice Hogan of Financial Zip
• The Importance of Savings Goals from Alison of This Wasn’t in the Plan

Big thanks to all the carnival entrants and to those of y’all who voted for them!

Magazines for Military Troops

Reader Sheila emailed me to let me know about a couple of websites that provide magazine subscriptions to active duty military folks, and give you the ability to donate a subscription for just $10!  I hadn’t heard of it, and neither has hubby, so a big thanks to Sheila for calling this to our attention

If you are active duty military, you can start up a wish list of magazine subscriptions at Subs4Servicemembers.  If you would like to donate a subscription to an active duty military servicemember, the website is Subs4Soldiers.  Sheila says:

People who know a serviceperson can select that particular serviceperson. But otherwise, the donors and recipients remain anonymous … What better way to celebrate memorial day than by giving to someone on active duty?

Well said, Sheila!  And thank you for the heads-up.

It’s been a beautiful mild sunny day here!  Hubby, son, and I went out for brunch then hit the grocery for a couple essentials while son got his hair cut so he doesn’t get written up at school.

The guys just embarked for the gaming shop, intent on getting table to use as a battlefield and should be occupied for at least six hours LOL  It’s been a bit of a goof-off day for us all.

Meanwhile, tomorrow I will be crowning the “Readers’ Choice” for the Carnival of Financial Goals, and currently there is a three-way tie for it.  So if you haven’t voted for your favorite financial goals post for this month, be sure to leave your comment

Also, Monday I will be holding the Carnival of Debt Reduction.  This has long been my favorite of the blog carnivals (gee, I wonder why?) and I am hoping for a good turnout.  Bloggers, be sure to submit your debt-killing posts by tomorrow night!

Everyone needs goals to work for and towards, right?  And if it’s good enough for life and work, why wouldn’t setting goals be good enough for your finances?

While I didn’t make my goal of getting this posted before finishing my first cup of coffee, I did get all the submissions sorted and will have this done before the end of the 2nd cup of coffee!  I find coffee helps me with goals LOL  So here we go!

Financial Goal Setting

• Six Ways To Set Personal-Finance Goals Without Doing Much Math from GBlogger at Can I Get Rich ona Salary?
• The Importance of Savings Goals from Alison at This Wasn’t in The Plan
• A Vision and a Plan from Amy at My Daily Dollars
• Create Your Own Dollar Plan: Step 1 from Madison at My Dollar Plan
• Stop Setting Goals! Start Gathering Goals! from SquawkFox
• 5 Steps to Accomplishing Your Financial Goals and Making Goals Adaptable from Brice Hogan at Financial Zip
• Save and Invest Enough For Your Retirement: Are You On Track? from Silicon Valley Blogger at Digerati Life

Personal Finance Goals

• Pay Off My Mortage Faster? - Here Is My Plan from Mr. Credit Card at Ask Mr. Credit Card
• Financial Goals Progress Report from Sick of Being Poor
• 2008 Financial Goals Nearly Met from Nancy at Sunny Island Breezes
• The Zen And Art Of Coupon Clipping from Nicole at Breaking Even
• Shifting Gears From Debt Repayment to Saving from Paid Twice at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already
• Financial and Blogging Goals  from me LOL 

You’ll notice there is no commentary and no editor’s choice pick … that’s because I am throwing the comments open for y’all to vote on which is your favorite financial goals post!  Sunday morning when I wake up and get that first cup of coffee (notice a theme here?) I will count up the votes in the comments and list the READERS’ CHOICE for this carnival :)  Read all the entries, then let me know which you like the best in the comments section.

Oh, my post is not eligible for this, I just included it because I wrote it specifically for this carnival.

First up, I’d like to welcome the No Credit Needed readers who are clicking through from my guest post over there about becoming debt free.  I wrote that post shortly after I hit my big debt free milestone, and the enthusiasm and exuberance still shine through.  Feel free to peruse the archives and check out my “Best of DFR” page which is somewhat up-to-date LOL considering I have a tough time determining which of my posts are actually “best” versus what the readers love the most.  (A note: categories still aren’t fixed from my technical problems in March, still need to work on that…)

I set myself a blogging goal last week of participating in at least three blog carnivals per week this month, and hit that mark this week even with the blog carnival site refusing to acknowledge my URLs even exist.  They’ve had their own site issues in the past week so I probably shouldn’t be too harsh.  Blog carnivals I participated in:

• The 138th Carnival of Debt Reduction hosted by Rocket Finance.  I just had to giggle out loud when I read his remarks about my post on Congress and the Fed Taking on the Credit Card Industry!
• The inagural Carnival of Wealth Money and Life was held at Dollar Frugal and  included my post Safety Tips from Your Pizza Driver.
• Finally, Alpha Consumer held the (always huge) 151st Carnival of Personal Finance with a “surviving the squeeze” theme and gave a high listing to my post Stagflation Suvival Tip #1 - Stocking up.

Happy reading at the carnivals!  Meanwhile I am still in my self-imposed (bad place) of researching the stagflation survival idea, particularly trying to find reliable sources on why the official government inflation numbers aren’t matching my experience.  Talk about some tough reading!  Most of the links I am finding are not only old, but written by academics and practically need an interpreter.  This may take a couple days just to sort out.

Final blog carnival note: I am hosting the Carnival of Financial Goals tomorrow, a few days late because of the troubles at blog carnival site.  Bloggers, you still have until I pull myself out of bed and grab that first cup of coffee in the morning to submit your financial goals posts!

It’s almost midnight here, and I am nowhere near tired thanks to a good nap before work.  So I could waste time sacking castles on a video game, or ramble here on the blog LOL

Some blog carnival notes for fellow bloggers:

• I am holding the Carnival of Financial Goals on Wednesday.  Blog Carnival was down part of the weekend, and the scheduled host had personal business out of town with limited internet.  If you have blogged about your financial goals, you have until I wake up and get coffee on Wednesday morning to submit your posts.  If you haven’t written up your financial goals, that gives you two days to do so!  Also, with BC being squirrely, you can email me (addy on about page) or twitter me (that didn’t sound right…) if the submission form isn’t working.
• I am holding the Carnival of Debt Reduction on Monday the 12th (next week).  I am hoping for some really great submissions about killing off that evil debt!  But I will happily include posts about reducing debt as well, and really love to read about success in the battle. (hint)

At work tips were lackluster all weekend, which is odd for the first weekend of the month.  All I can say is folks can buy nice cars, a nice house in a nice neighborhood, but they can’t buy class.  Not tipping at all shows no class.  I am hoping this is just a statistical anomaly, but I have the uneasy feeling I may be right about the direction of the local economy.  Guess I better get cracking on that ebook idea!  Question for y’all readers: should I make the ebooks free, or charge a few dollars per ebook?

And on a very related note to both the ebook project and pizza delivery, I’ve decided to do that topic first!  If you have questions about delivering pizzas as a part-time job, feel free to ask.  You just might inspire an entire section of the upcoming ebook.

Finally, I forgot to put out the question I posed a couple weeks ago: How many of y’all tried my gas mileage challenge?  If you did, what were your results?

Two cups of coffee and I still can’t put my thoughts into coherent form today, plus I have to go camp out on campus again for finals … so it’s a link love post for y’all.  My brain is in chemistry student mode LOL

First up, I need to get caught up on what little blog carnivalling I’ve been doing recently:

• I’ll be hosting the Carnival of Debt Reduction on May 12th, so fire up those debt reducing and debt killing posts and submit them!
• Quest for Four Pillars hosted the 9th Carnival of Money Hacks, and listed my post about Why You Don’t Get your EPA Fuel Economy MPG as a “Best Slasher” (check out the theme for that carnival

I haven’t been reading the blogs as much recently … but here’s a few that did catch my eye:

• Will the economic stimulus package help you survive a recession? at Credit Withdrawal.  I’ll get to my opinion in a minute…
• 10 Ways new parents overspend on newborns at Moolanomy.  It’s been years since my son was a baby … but I’ve seen quite a few good examples of this over the years.
• Remodeling This Life shares her best financial moves in college … how many of us made good financial moves and decisions at that age? LOL

Now, for the one thing I have actually been reading about … other than organic chemistry: the Federal Reserve FOMC starts their two-day meeting this morning to decide the fate of the U.S. economy (otherwise known as setting the interest rate).  Here’s a few good articles on it:

• Fed expected to cut rates this week and oh I hope not!!!
• However, Fed rate cut not a sure thing as more “experts” are saying what I’ve been fussing and fuming about for months
• and the Fed has the golden opportunity to stop the commodities run-up … and give us average people a break maybe!  Anyone want to take bets?

It’s no secret I have a pretty low opinion of the Fed’s rate cut policy, and I am pretty convinced this “economic stimulus package” payment will end up at most folk’s local grocery store and gas station.  There’s this thing called INFLATION that Ben Bernake seems to be totally ignoring, mostly in the form of rising food and energy costs (which the government conveniently strips OUT of their inflation calculations).

They’ll announce their decision about fifteen minutes before we organic chem students go into the slaughter known as a year-long cumulative final, but y’all can probably guess what kind of post I will write if they do remain stupid and cut the interest rate again.

Now I am off to study again … and finish up a couple of projects due before the finals (which cannot be over with soon enough!!!).