Consumer debt is bad. Please don’t accumulate credit card debt and other debt if you want to achieve financial freedom. 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
Should We Still Be Spending Money And Having Fun While Deep In Consumer Debt? Read More »
Guaranteed returns are always nice. Unfortunately, guaranteed returns are generally low compared to the potential returns you can make investing in stocks, real estate, and other risk assets. The 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
When 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
Should The FICO Score Be Eliminated? SoFi Creates A FICO-Free Loan Application Read More »
I 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
How To Sell Your Soul For A Buck Read More »
A 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
Does A Good Credit Score Really Matter Anymore? Read More »
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
The Financial Samurai Podcast Episode 2: Is Paying Down Debt Considered Savings? Read More »
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
From Debtor To Millionaire: How A Windfall Changed My Life Read More »
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 ~4.5%. 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
The Reality Of How People Get Into Debt – It Just Creeps Up! Read More »
Are you wondering how to pay off a lot of credit card debt in one month? Let me show you how. It’s really quite simple. 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%
How To Pay Off $35,000 In Credit Card Debt In One Month Read More »
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
The Best Rewards Credit Card Is The Citi ThankYou® Card Read More »
