Along with death and taxes, you can count on inflation to lie in waiting for you.
What is inflation? It’s a $40.00 fill-up. It’s the $4.00 loaf of bread, the $1,200.00 rent payment, the $150,00 electric bill, and the $12.00 movie ticket. And it never stops.
The first three online calculators have helped wipe out your credit card debt, plan an early loan payoff, and buy a car within your budget
Once you’ve gotten that far (and maybe you’re there already), you’ll want to sharpen your savings plan.
The online calculator in this installment is very similar to the loan reduction calculator featured last time. Bankrate.com calls it an Auto Calculator and gives you more options for narrowing your price range and terms.
In all good conscience, I can’t talk about this tool without first mentioning that Real World Finance is strongly opposed to taking out a loan to buy a car. As detailed in an earlier article, the advantages of saving for your next car purchase are many and the dollar savings are significant.
The first article in this five-part series featured the online credit card calculator, designed to give you the hard numbers on what it will take to pay off the credit card company. It was first because getting rid of credit card debt is the number one priority on the road to financial freedom.
The next calculator represents the second big step, and that is paying off an existing loan as quickly as possible. For most people this could mean an auto loan, or a home equity line of credit loan. Your motivation for paying off the loan early is a big savings in interest charges.
Regular readers of Real World Finance know I’m an advocate of seeing the big picture, financially and otherwise. If we don’t understand where we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re headed, then chances are pretty good we’ll continue repeating mistakes and getting nowhere.
After I graduated from college and started making a little money, I was struck by an idea that seemed to come out of the blue: Why not buy a year’s worth of consumables all at once?
The concept made at least some sense. Running out of anything has always really bugged me. So has needing to make a purchase because I’m about to run out (invariably at a higher price and maybe not finding what I really want). Also the reality of returning from a shopping run and realizing I’d forgotten something, in spite of the Master List, motivated me to look for a better way.
This blog article was scheduled to be about bulk buying. Tune in next time, as they say, because that show has been preempted. In its place I want to say a few words about the idea of being cheap.
To me, the word cheap is repulsive. I think of cheap and trashy as the same thing when it comes to products. I am still incredulous when an adult buys something cheap and then expresses shock when it falls apart like the junk it is. At least when a kid does it, there’s still a chance he will learn that not all XYZs are the same.
Back in college I came up with the idea of creating what I called my Master List, and over the years it has saved me more time and money than any other tool I can think of. Much like my To Do list, it has evolved very little since I started using it, probably because it is so simple.
One Step Ahead is a concept that, if allowed it to come into your life, will give you the gift of freedom. As you will come to learn, One Step Ahead can take a thousand different forms, with the end result always the same—more freedom and more choice. What you do with that is always up to you.
You probably know that a debit card (a.k.a. check card) looks almost exactly like a credit card. While it may display a VISA or MasterCard logo on the front, it will also say Check Card or Debit somewhere on the front. When the card is swiped at the register, funds are verified and withdrawn electronically from your bank.
You also know that using a debit card is much faster and easier than writing a check, and that you won’t run the risk of incurring interest fees or late charges (unlike using a credit card). So how is this not the perfect solution for paying at the register? Here are five things that may surprise you about debit cards.
