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August 4, 2010, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! Hello my awesome readers! I need a small favor. Please also leave some comments on my other posts today at Sweating the Big Stuff, 7 Reasons Why I am Using Your $23, and at Live Real, Now, Let’s Talk Pets and Other Unexpected Expenses (the one with cute pictures of Mr. Pug himself). 
I would truly appreciate your help. If I can help in some way too, please email me. I’d be happy to return the favor!
This post on Yahoo Finance, 10 Tip-Offs You’re Heading for a Debt Disaster, covered the following 10 warning signs that you are headed for deep trouble.
1. Your bank account is consistently overdrawn.
2. Your credit card balances are rising.
3. You’re only making minimum payments on your credit cards.
4. You and your partner are arguing about money.
5. Your savings account is busted.
6. You’re juggling your monthly bill payments.
7. You don’t know how much you owe.
8. You’re keeping secrets.
9. You’ve got a credit card collection.
10. You’re near the limit on your credit cards.
Am I alone in thinking, “well…duh”? Even if someone sadly has all of the problems listed above, I would hope they’d already know that they are in deep doo-doo…if not, I doubt this list would help. But, for arguments sake, let’s say they just needed to be told that the signs above mean BAD things for their financial future. Hope this helps.
The only one on the list that we come close to is number 9, having a credit card collection. They argue that even if you are a rewards card user (like me), you should only have 3 cards and close the other accounts. Mr. BFS and I have five credit cards but only use three of them since they have the best rewards. I’m choosing to leave the other accounts open for two main reasons:
1) I’m lazy and that would take a couple of phone calls.
2) I like having the lines of credit even if we never use them…like a backup for our backup plan.
Do you agree that this list seems a little obvious? If not, what am I missing? Should I cover one of the points in more detail in the future?
August 3, 2010, at 6:00 am
You know you are behind the times when you spend hours looking for something that stores apparently no longer sell.
I just wasted 2 hours driving around looking for an electronic organizer. I thought it may be time to have a calendar that doesn’t just hang on my wall at work. I’m hoping to find a pocket-sized way to easily keep up with my schedule and everything my husband asks me to remember too. I don’t have Outlook at home and a paper organizer just seems bulky.
Honestly, I could probably find one that is a perfect size, but an electronic version just seems cooler. I know, I know…let’s just say my inner-consumer wants this one little thing. Preferably, I’d like a calendar that shows the whole month and highlights the days that I have something scheduled. Then I want to be able to zoom in on the day and see what I wrote. Does that exist?
Walmart didn’t have one in stock and Office Depot, Best Buy, and Office Max no longer carry electronic organizers at all. A Best Buy employee suggested I buy an Ipod Touch since it has a calendar like I wanted. Hahaha…yes, I totally want to spend $150 on something when I just wanted to use one of its features.
I can find one online of course, but I was hoping to get some hands on testing. After looking at my options, I can either spend $15 on a mediocre calendar circa the 1990s, $60-$100 on something like a Palm Pilot, or just wait until December to get a better phone with an easy-to-use calendar for $50 when we renew our cell phone contract. I’m leaning towards that last option. If I can just get a QWERTY keyboard, I’d be a happy woman.
Do any of you have an easy-to-use digital calendar? Any suggestions for me? BTW, have any of you heard of this Royal Machines one from Amazon…is it any good?
August 2, 2010, at 6:00 am
For anyone new to BFS, I post a net worth update at the beginning of every month in order to keep myself motivated and to involve BFS readers. Please feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, or even post your net worths too. I am a participant-motivated blogger, so please jump on in.
I calculate our net worth as listed below. I don’t include the value of our possessions, I round down to the nearest hundred for assets, and I round up to the nearest hundred for liabilities. I also don’t include my husband’s pension account since I’m too lazy to keep up with it and it shouldn’t actually matter until he retires.
Assets
1. Cash – $9900 ($3600 down. We had another $300 in vet bills, $600 for final cruise bill, the final grad school bill was $2000, and we paid off the remaining $4600 of the car loan…BIG MONTH! Thankfully, we also got a few paychecks that helped. )
2. Stocks – $16,800 ($1000 up)
3. Retirement – $35,800 ($3200 up)
4. Home – $130,000 (same)
5. Cars – $14,000 (both of our cars took a $1000 hit this month, lol…at least they’re paid off)
Liabilities
1. Home – $71,000 (down $600)
2. Car – $0 (We paid the $4600 off July 16 at 1:48pm!!! Only mortgage debt left baby!!!)
Total Net Worth = $135,500 instead of $131,700
Increase/Decrease = Up $3800 from last month…hahaha…we’re back to May’s net worth…
Okay, so the stock market was kind to us and made up for all the cash we dished out, woot! NO MORE GRAD SCHOOL!!! NO MORE CAR LOAN!!! Yeah, I still have an allergy-ridden Pug that is going to cost us a bloody fortune, but we only have our mortgage debt left to go!!! WOOT, WOOT!!!
I base the value of our home on two things: comparables selling in our neighborhood and the estimated appraisal by Chase Home Value Estimator. I will always estimate very low.
I base the value of our cars on Kelley Blue Book’s Private Party Value of our vehicles in “Good” condition truncated down to the nearest $1000. For example, if my car is valued at $4600, I’d calculate that as $4000.
Please feel free to visit the archive to see our past net worths.
August 1, 2010, at 6:00 am
BFS is a member of the Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge! My ranking last week was 85,159. Now it is 80,340! We’re so close once again!
The original goal was to be in the top 200,000 by July 4, 2010 and you helped me blow that out of the water in 2 months…a whole month early! Then we were shooting for 100,000 by July 4th and we hit that goal too!!!
Now I’ve started a new goal of 75,000 by the end of August. Moving up is getting harder and harder, but we really kicked butt this week! We completed another half of the goal in one week, WOW! This week is going to be informative and fun since it’s time for our net worth update and a new budget. Along with the regular schedule, I’ll be posted at Sweating the Big Stuff and Live Real, Now this coming Wednesday. Like I said, this is going to be fun! Let’s see if we can hit our goal almost a month early again!!!
I would like to sincerely thank all of my readers and the members of the Yakezie Challenge. Obviously, this would have been impossible without all of you. Thank you all so much!
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here.
If you are a Yakezie member and don’t see yourself on my member list, please send me an email or leave a comment here to be added. I copied the list originally in early March and updated it in mid-June. Please let me know if you are still missing. Thanks!
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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