Financial Samurai

Slicing Through Money's Mysteries

Should We Still Be Spending Money And Having Fun While Deep In Consumer Debt?

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During the depths of the financial crisis, one of the proposals I sent to the Obama administration was to institute spending curbs based on high school or college grade point averages. It didn’t matter whether you went to Community College or UC Berkeley since everybody’s circumstances are different. What matters is how well you did in school to justify want based spending as opposed to need based spending.

For example, if you were a D+ student (sub 2.0 GPA out of 4.0) you are only allowed to buy generic clothing and ride public transportation to work for the rest of your life. No car or lollipops for you. If you were a B student, then suddenly that new $20,000 Honda Civic is available to you after the dealer scans your ID to check the government GPA database. If you are an A student, then you are free to buy whatever you want because logic dictates that if you are smart enough to study hard in school then you are smart enough to practice good financial habits.

I was shocked Obama never acknowledged my letter because my proposal would only help the government expand their authority (think PRISM) over the people of this great nation. We voted for Big Government and I wanted to support the cause as much as possible as I figured out a way to go John Galt. Although Washington DC stayed silent, fellow patriotic Americans voiced their opinions in the comments section of the post, Tax Rates Based On Work Ethic Shall Fix The World. It’s all about creating incentives.

Just imagine a world where everything is rational. Imagine everybody reading their mortgage contracts before signing so that they are aware of their financial obligations instead of blaming others when they can’t pay. Imagine if everybody adopted the attitude of not deserving something until worked for? Now imagine a country where everybody is middle class and pitches in to support our country. There would be no socioeconomic warfare, just equality. We can always dream right?

DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH YOUR FINANCES, JUST DON’T HURT OTHERS

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Seeking Guaranteed Returns: Invest In A CD, Pay Down Mortgage Or Eliminate Student Loans?

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Pay down mortgage, student loans, or investThe first thing we need to understand is money used to invest in a CD, pay down a mortgage, or pay off student loans should be grouped together in one bucket: the guaranteed returns bucket. In a different bucket is the money used to invest in the stock market, private companies, and alternatives. This bucket carries risk in return for hopefully greater reward.

Within the first bucket of guaranteed returns, we can further differentiate between paying down debt and investing in a CD. Your mortgage and student loans will eventually be paid off based upon an agreed upon lending term. Even if you lob an extra $5,000 to pay down principal, your amortizing mortgage or student loan monthly payment will not change. The only thing that will change is your percentage mix that goes to paying principal (increases) and interest (decreases).

Given your mortgage and student loan payment amounts do not change, your monthly cash flow also does not change. The only real reason to pay down a loan quicker is due to the dislike of having such loans or the dislike of having loans plus the desire to make a guaranteed return compared to the risk alternative. You’ve already allocated some money towards riskier investments like the stock market.

The problem with paying down debt is that you increase your risk of insolvency because you reduce your liquidity. The increased risk might just move a hair, but it’s still moving towards insolvency if your income isn’t secure.

Here’s the game plan I followed to build my CD investment ladder for financial security while concurrently paying off $40,000 in graduate school loans in two years and a $464,000 mortgage in 12 years.

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Should The FICO Score Be Eliminated? SoFi Creates A FICO-Free Loan Application

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FICO Score Is Becoming UselessWhen I got rejected from my mortgage refinance in early 2015 I was pissed. I was in the third month of waiting before I got the bad news. I had locked in an outstanding 2.25% 5/1 Jumbo ARM rate that could have saved me $400 a month for the next five years. Having an 800+ Experian FICO score and a multiple six figure income was not good enough because a large portion of my income came from freelancing. Traditional banks require two years of freelance income history before ANY of it counts.

In 2012, another mortgage refinance almost got derailed. TransUnion, one of the major credit agencies, unbeknownst to me, had my FICO score down to 680 because a former tenant forgot to pay an $8 utility bill after moving out. PG&E, the utility company, didn’t bother to shoot me an e-mail, give me a ring, or send me a letter for the outstanding invoice. Instead, PG&E sent my name to a collections agency! Luckily, I got PG&E to write to my bank a “clear credit letter” and my refinance went through.

My 800+ Experian FICO score didn’t help me get a mortgage refinance, and my 680 TransUnion FICO score almost screwed me. Back then, it was clear to me that the FICO score was seriously flawed. Therefore, I was happy to hear SoFi, one of the leading online lenders who raised $1B in funding in 2015 from Softbank, decided to completely drop the FICO score from its loan qualification application for 2016 and beyond.

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How To Sell Your Soul For A Buck

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Sell Your Soul For MoneyI went to a San Francisco FinTech meetup to hear a founder speak the other week. He said that after he was fired from his hedge fund job in 2009, he needed something to do. He told us how he was inspired to help his friends find the best credit cards. Thus, he spent hours putting together a spreadsheet that compared various credit cards and sent the document around.

I’m not sure about you, but the last thing I was thinking about during the financial crisis was putting a list of credit cards together, with the eventual goal of hocking it to other people for money. That’s like pointing a flamethrower on a person who is already burning from a forest fire! Getting into too much debt is what caused the financial crisis, which is why I hardly write any credit card review posts.

Based on the audience’s reaction, the founder seemed to successfully sell his story that being a credit card lead generator was his passion. One woman in the audience even gleefully asked the founder what his ideal credit card would be. Was she simply trying to butter him up to get a job? I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. 

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Does A Good Credit Score Really Matter Anymore?

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Does a high credit score matter anymore? Most don't careA couple mortgage refinances ago, I almost screwed myself because I had an $8 judgment against me from my local utility company that crushed my credit score by ~100 points. I thought I had an excellent credit score of 780, and I did, when I first started my 100 day refinance hell. But when my refinance bank pulled my credit report again around the 90th day, my TransUnion score plummeted to 680.

My mortgage refinance was delayed by another 10 days as my bank investigated the situation. Thankfully, everything turned out fine in the end. Since that time, I decided to regularly check my credit score once a year like I check my latest insurance coverage and health coverage. It’s good practice given it’s estimated about 5% of credit reports have errors as well.

Given I finally got rejected from my latest mortgage refinance attempt by Chase, I’ve begun to question whether a credit score has any meaning anymore. You see, I never missed a mortgage payment on this particular mortgage, and my latest credit score showed a 787. Anything above a 740 is considered excellent, and good enough for the best rate by major lenders.

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The Financial Samurai Podcast Episode 2: Is Paying Down Debt Considered Savings?

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Financial Samurai Podcast

The Financial Samurai podcast episode 2: is paying down debt considered savings?

A reader asked on my post, The Average Savings Rates By Income, whether I consider paying down debt part of my personal savings rate calculation. My immediate thought was yes, but I realized I haven’t been including debt pay down at all when I discuss my after-tax savings rate of 50%+ in various posts on Financial Samurai.

Here is the outline of today’s 17 minute podcast.

Why I Don’t Include Paying Down Debt In My Personal Savings Rate

1) Be conservative. Don’t rely on anybody or any organization to survive. There are a lot of broken promises out there.

2) You don’t reward yourself for doing something bad. Punish yourself instead.

3) Compartmentalize your money. No co-mingling of funds.

By the time you retire, if your property is paid off and you get social security and your 401k then fantastic. If not, then you’re still OK, because you never expected anything from anyone in the first place.

The only time I would consider including paying down debt as part of my personal savings rate is when I pay extra principal down on my primary mortgage. The extra principal pay down could have been used for other wealth-building activities, so including it should be OK. The thing you want to be careful about is being house rich, and cash poor. There’s a balance you’ve got to carefully work out over the years.

Readers, Do you include paying down debt in your personal savings rate? If so, what are the reasons why?

Speaking notes: I appreciate everybody’s feedback from my first podcast entitled, Genesis. About 60% of you seem to want shorter podcasts, so I’ve decided to produce a much shorter 12 minute podcast and see how it goes. In terms of speed, pitch, and tone it doesn’t look like I have a problem based on your comments. But I’ve sped up my speaking speed in this podcast to test.

A couple of you mentioned I should be more enthusiastic in delivery and not be afraid of laughing at my jokes. The style I’d like to emulate are the shows from NPR where no matter how crazy the subject, the speaker stays within his zone. I like NPR’s style, so that’s what I plan to go with for now.

To listen to the podcast, click Play to have it play within the post. You can also download the podcast onto your computer or phone by clicking Download. If you don’t see the options in e-mail, click the title of this post to come to my site. 

Subscribe To Financial Samurai On iTunes

I’ve created a Financial Samurai iTunes channel to subscribe to. This way, if you prefer listening, you can always get the latest audio version delivered directly to your iPhone. As of now, the channel can only carry the latest five podcasts.

Further, I’ve created a Financial Samurai Podcast Page that has every single podcast I’ve published, including the links to the respective posts. Bookmark it or search for it in my search box. I’ll be updating this page once a week.

Related posts:

Use FS-DAIR To Decide On How To Pay Down Debt Or Invest

The Recommended Net Worth Allocation By Age And Work Experience

Recommendation To Build Wealth

Manage Your Finances In One Place: One of the best way to become financially independent and protect yourself is to get a handle on your finances by signing up with Personal Capital. They are a free online platform which aggregates all your financial accounts in one place so you can see where you can optimize your money.

Before Personal Capital, I had to log into eight different systems to track 25+ difference accounts (brokerage, multiple banks, 401K, etc) to manage my finances on an Excel spreadsheet. Now, I can just log into Personal Capital to see how all my accounts are doing, including my net worth. I can also see how much I’m spending and saving every month through their cash flow tool.

The best feature is their Portfolio Fee Analyzer, which runs your investment portfolio(s) through its software in a click of a button to see what you are paying. I found out I was paying $1,700 a year in portfolio fees I had no idea I was hemorrhaging! There is no better financial tool online that has helped me more to achieve financial freedom. It only takes a minute to sign up.

Finally, they recently launched their amazing Retirement Planning Calculator that pulls in your real data and runs a Monte Carlo simulation to give you deep insights into your financial future. Personal Capital is free, and less than one minute to sign up. It’s one of the most valuable tools I’ve found to help achieve financial freedom.

The Financial Samurai podcast continues to go strong in 2021+. I plan to continue releasing one Financial Samurai podcast episode a month forever.

From Debtor To Millionaire: How A Windfall Changed My Life

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From Debtor To Millionaire is a guest post from J.D. Roth, who founded the blog Get Rich Slowly in 2006 and is the author of Your Money: The Missing Manual. I first met JD in 2010 for lunch up in Portland when I was still working.

By that time, J.D. was already a mini-celebrity in the personal finance world through his story telling abilities and topical focus of paying down debt and living a more frugal lifestyle. We came from opposite ends of the financial and topical spectrum, but as fate would have it, we’re in pretty similar boats now.

I admire J.D. because he is a “blogging purist” – someone who writes for the love of writing first, community second, and income a distant third. This is th way I’ve sought to write all my posts on Financial Samurai since 2009.

Instead of an interview, I asked J.D. to share his story of how he went from debtor living paycheck-to-paycheck to financially free in just a few short years. 

In The Beginning – A Debtor

I’m a lucky man, and I know it. But for a long time, it sure didn’t seem that way.

When I was a boy, my family was poor. We lived in a single-wide trailer house in rural Oregon. My father was often out of work. When he was unemployed, things were rough. We never went hungry, but sometimes we came close. More than once, we were bailed out by the kindness of other families in our church.

We didn’t always struggle. Sometimes my parents had money, at least for a little while. You see, my father was a serial entrepreneur. He was always starting businesses. Even when he had a job selling boxes or staplers or candy bars, he had something going on the side. Most of his businesses failed, but some succeeded.

In 1977, my father sold one business for $300,000. He was supposed to receive $5000 per month for fifteen years, which seemed like a lot of money at the time. To celebrate, he went out and bought an airplane, a sailboat, and a Kenwood stereo. Life was good — until the buyer went bankrupt. Because he hadn’t saved anything from the few payments, Dad was broke again. And unemployed. And a debtor. We were right back where we’d started.

This “famine or feast” pattern continued throughout my entire childhood. Most of the time, it was famine — not feast.

In the late 1980s, I went away to college. Because I knew my parents couldn’t help me pay for school, I took care of things myself. I was a good student with a lot of extracurricular activities: president of the computer club, national competitor in Future Business Leaders of America, editor of the school literary magazine, and so on. Plus I had terrific scores on the the PSAT and SAT. As a result, I earned a full-ride scholarship. I worked two or three or five jobs to pay for housing and to earn spending money.

During college, I developed a spending habit. In order to keep up with my friends, many of whom seemed to be rich (as I defined it at the time), I used credit cards. I began to carry debt. At first, I only owed a few hundred dollars, but by the time I graduated with a psychology degree, I had a few thousand dollars in credit-card debt.

After college, my debts continued to mount. I bought a new car. When I had money, I spent it. When I didn’t have money, I still spent it. By the middle of 1995, just four years after I’d graduated, I’d accumulated over $20,000 in credit-card debt. It got worse. In 2004, my consumer debt topped $35,000. I felt like I was drowning as a debtor.



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The Reality Of How People Get Into Debt – It Just Creeps Up!

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Clown From Movie IT I am an opponent of consumer debt because the interest rates that credit cards charge are usurious when compared to the government bond yield of ~2.8%. If you are going to use a credit card, please pay it off in full every month or you’re just lighting your money on fire. This ain’t Vegas where everybody is making it rain in the clubs you know!

We probably shouldn’t be living it up while still deep in consumer debt if we want to achieve financial freedom. But it’s just so hard when we’ve got our parents, government bailouts, rich friends, and wealthy spouses who will take care of us if we go overboard. Paying $4 an hour for parking with my credit card doesn’t feel so bad. But when I’ve got to load up the meter with 16 quarters, damn, what a ripoff! It’s only natural to want what other people with means have, so we spend since it’s so easy.

One of my readers called me out on my assumption that indebted consumers consciously spend beyond their means. Is it so bad for me to assume a mugger isn’t threatening to chop off your pinky if you don’t buy yourself $1,000 Christian Loubotin pumps or a $8,000 Panerai Submersible watch? I think so, but here’s a fantastic perspective by “GetAGrip” which I thoroughly appreciate.

DEBT CREEPS UP ON YOU LIKE A CLOWN IN THE GUTTER 

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How To Pay Off $35,000 In Credit Card Debt In One Month

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Credit Card Debt

Are you wondering how to pay off a lot of credit card debt in one month? Let me show you how.

Several years ago, I put around $35,000 on my one and only credit card thanks to a home remodeling project and a new watch purchase. My “reward” was a 1% rebate towards my home mortgage, which is not bad considering $350 paid to principal is thousands in interest savings over the life of the loan.

$35,000 is the most I’ve ever put on a credit card in one month and it felt kind of odd. But, I really wanted to create a new bathroom from a closet to add functionality and value to my house. There’s an amazing amount of stuff you need to buy when building a new bathroom: wall tiles, toilet, limestone, shower heads, copper pipes, sinks, mirrors, lights, deep soaking jacuzzi jet tub, lights, light fixtures, paint, doors, crystal knobs, skylight, ventilator and so forth. $20,000 in materials adds up quick!

The watch was a Stainless Steel Daytona that cost $9,600, which I promptly sold for a profit three weeks later because a friend begged me to sell it to him! For those who know watches, the Stainless Steel Daytona is one of the most coveted watches on the market, which can’t be bought in any store. You need a jeweler, connections, or a history of purchases to gain access to this particular watch. It’s a big waste of money, but one of my weaknesses that I so conveniently categorize as a hobby to justify.

Add on all the other normal purchases of food, insurance, membership dues and transportation costs, racking up $35,000 in credit card debt in a month is just as easy done as said!

THE SECRET TO PAYING OFF $35,000 In CREDIT CARD DEBT

When the bill came due 30 days later, I had a choice of paying the minimum (stupid), paying a portion of it (stupid), or paying it all (commonsense). I spent a good 15 seconds deliberating what to do, and came up with the following steps to show you how to pay off $35,000 in credit card debt.

1) Log into your bank account.

2) Identify which account (checking, savings, money market) has at least $35,000.

3) Transfer $35,000 to your linked credit card account and press send.

4) If you credit card account isn’t linked, send an electronic check for $35,000 from your checking account to the appropriate address.

5) Kick back and relax, knowing that you just got to borrow $35,000 interest free, while getting reward points in the process.

Pretty simple right?  There wasn’t any funky 0% credit card transfers, nor was there a liquidation of investments, or a loan from my 401K . The bill was just paid off, like all bills are supposed to be paid off every single month. There’s no way I was going to let the credit card company charge me 9.8% interest for that month.  Even with the 10-year yield below 3.5%, and inflation still benign, I cannot believe that the lowest rate I can get with a 780+ credit score is just below 10%. Ludicrous!

You might be wondering where the insight is. Well, it’s right in front of you. The reason why I can pay off $35,000 in credit card debt in one month is because I was approved by the credit card company. 

No credit card company will give you a line of credit without checking your credit history and income level to make sure that you can pay. If they never checked, they’d surely lose a ton of money with poor creditors and blow themselves up.  Companies are not stupid if they plan to survive.

When you read stories about people paying off $70,000, $80,000, and even $100,000 in credit card debt, it’s not that incredible. The reason why they have $70,000-$100,000 in credit card debt is because they have a high level of income to support such credit lines. In other words, having such high credit card debt means you can afford it, otherwise, you wouldn’t have it in the first place!

Please read the best and worst types of debt so you can better grow your finances.

DON’T WORRY ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE AS THEY’RE DOING FINE!

You wouldn’t lend an unemployed 22 year old college grad with $100,000 in student loans much money, if any. Whereas you wouldn’t mind extending a $50,000 line of credit at a 10% interest rate to a doctor whose been making $650,000 a year for the past 5 years and has a 780 credit score. Everything is aligned, just the way it should be.

The media tends to trick you with asymmetric information. There’s really little to worry about with the typical US consumer.  Only a small minority of people are delusional enough to spend more than they earn or have.

Furthermore, everybody knows that not paying back what you owe is a highly dishonorable thing to do. The good thing is that credit card companies prevent you from blowing yourself up by giving you only what you can afford.

The next time you are amazed at someone paying off a huge amount of credit card debt, don’t be. Just like how no student gets into $100,000 in debt if they don’t plan to work in a lucrative field after college.

Very few people get into massive credit card debt without being able to afford it. To do so would be like dropping dumbbells on your toes on purpose! You can never count out the US consumer. We are logical and strong like bull!

Related: Pay Down Debt Or Invest? Implement FS-DAIR

Recommendations

Looking for an awesome travel rewards credit card? Check out the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and other great rewards cards. I use my Chase credit card for all my business and travel spending to get points for more free travel, insurance in case my bags are lost or my flight is stuck, and more insurance for defective products I buy and want to return. Everybody should have a credit card for the free 30 day credit. Just make sure to pay off your credit card every month in full! Check out some of the benefits:

  • Earn 50,000 bonus points when you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That’s a ~$650 value right there.
  • Named a ‘Best Credit Card’ for Travel Rewards by MONEY Magazine.
  • You get 2X points on travel and dining at restaurants & 1 point per dollar spent on all other purchases.

* Manage Your Finances In One Place: One of the best way to become financially independent and protect yourself is to get a handle on your finances by signing up with Personal Capital. They are a free online platform which aggregates all your financial accounts in one place so you can see where you can optimize your money.

Before Personal Capital, I had to log into eight different systems to track 25+ difference accounts (brokerage, multiple banks, 401K, etc) to manage my finances on an Excel spreadsheet. Now, I can just log into Personal Capital to see how all my accounts are doing, including my net worth. I can also see how much I’m spending and saving every month through their cash flow tool.

Finally, they recently launched their amazing Retirement Planning Calculator that pulls in your real data and runs a Monte Carlo simulation to give you deep insights into your financial future. Personal Capital is free, and less than one minute to sign up. Ever since I started using the tools in 2012, I’ve been able to maximize my own net worth and see it grow tremendously.

Personal Capital Retirement Planner Tool

Is your retirement on track? Check with PC’s Retirement Planner

Updated for 2018 and beyond. Now is more important than ever to track your net worth because the easy money has already been made. I suspect uninspiring times until 2019-2020 as we’ve just gone through a 7-8 year bull run since the financial crisis. Refinance your mortgage, increase your savings, and watch your money like a hawk!

The Best Rewards Credit Card Is The Citi ThankYou® Card

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Citi ThankYou Rewards Credit Card

The best rewards credit card was the Citi ThankYou card. Let’s review the best rewards credit card a little further in this post.

The main reason I opened a relationship with Citibank in 2001 was because they are an international bank with good customer service.

I use to travel overseas twice a year for my job and wanted to access a Citibank branch wherever I went. Chase couldn’t do that at the time, neither could Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bank of The West, and frankly most banks.

When my Citibank ATM card was stolen in Beijing back in 2003, I was able to get another card sent to my hotel room two days later with all erroneous charges expunged. I’ve got a whole story to tell about this incident, which I’ll save for another post. It was then that I knew I would be a Citibank customer for life.

My Citi ThankYou® Preferred credit card is my main personal credit card. I try and put everything on the card because of the rewards points and the clear monthly consolidated spending statement. The goal is to easily track my expenses and maximize my rewards points.

The Best Rewards Credit Card Has The Best Rewards Program

Citibank owns the URL www.thankyou.com. That itself provides a hint to how comprehensive Citibank’s rewards program is for its customers. I’ve got 10 different accounts with Citibank which all acrue rewards points every month on top of whatever I spend on my Citi ThankYou® card. That’s like passive income, but for rewards points. Rewards points add up over time, especially if you can focus!

Main Rewards Categories

* Merchandise

* Travel & Experiences

* Gift Cards & Prepaid Cards

* Cash & Charity

The best rewards credit card has the best categories. Within each main category are sub categories for everything you can imagine. I mainly use my rewards points for hotel nights on vacation, flights to Honolulu, gasoline gift cards, and tennis racquet grips of all things!

USING MY CITI THANKYOU® POINTS FOR A NEW HOME THEATRE SYSTEM

I’ve had my 60″ projection LCD TV since 2004 when I first bought my house. Unfortunately, the picture is starting to get a cloudy green as the bulbs fade. I’ve wanted to get a new TV since 2010, however I just couldn’t get over the fact that just one year later, the TV would be cheaper and have better technology!

Furthermore, given the move away from component cables to HDMI cables, I needed to also get a new receiver, cable box, Blu-Ray DVD player and cables at a cost over over $1,000! At least I didn’t have to buy new Definitive Tech speakers.

I wasn’t planning on using my Citi ThankYou® points to buy an expensive home theatre system until my friend reminded me to take a look. With 123,000 points accumulated, I was hopeful I could get something!

Here’s what I found:

Philips 40PFL4907 40 1080p LED-LCD TV – 105,500 points, retail estimate $850-$950

Toshiba Wi-Fi Ready Blu-Ray DVD Player – 10,800 points, retail estimate $110

Pioneer – 400W 5.1-Ch. 3D Pass-Through A/V Home Theater Receiver – 41,500 points, retail estimate $350-$400

Three Belkin HDMI 6-inch Cables – 6,000 Points, retail estimate $100

Total Points Needed: 163,800

Short: 40,8000 points

How is that for the best rewards credit card? As we learn in life, we can’t always get everything we want, especially if we don’t work for it. Hence, I decided to use my points to buy the LED TV, Blu-ray player, and HDMI cables, leaving me only with the receiver to purchase. There is a wide range of receivers out there for various prices.

My main goal for a home theatre system is to spend the least amount of money for a “good enough” modern technology system. I’m not interested in spending big bucks for the highest quality components because in three years there will be something even better. Hence, I decided to go to Best Buy and purchase a Denon 400W 5.1Ch. receiver for $250.

I ended up saving $1,275 thanks to my Citi ThankYou® Preferred credit card! $1,275 is money I really would have spent. It’s not the best bang for the buck using points vs. shelling out cash, but it’s even worse to unnecessarily spend money!

I really enjoy my best rewards credit card. That said, there are many other rewards credit cards to choose from.

Wealth Building Recommendation

Track Your Wealth For Free. In order to optimize your finances, you’ve first got to track your finances. I recommend signing up for Personal Capital’s free financial tools so you can track your net worth, analyze your investment portfolios for excessive fees, and run your financials through their fantastic Retirement Planning Calculator.

Those who are on top of their finances build much greater wealth longer term than those who don’t. I’ve used Personal Capital since 2012. It’s the best free financial app out there to manage your money.

Planning for retirement when paying for private grade school
Are you on the right retirement path? There is no rewind button.

Here are my other favorite credit cards.