November's winner of the "I CAN'T AFFORD IT AWARD"

If you haven't heard, I have been out of time this month. It's usually the month I get to my irritation with cheaters of the motab Christmas concert or my spill on turkey bags. Back in March or April this year I wrote a little bit on my wife being pregnant. If you do your calculation right you'll realize she is due any day now with that and my job running full speed I don't have alot of time with bloging. I have been using alot of time with my new financial project and that is coming along really well. New developments are pretty much daily so alot of my time is spent on that. Since I'm pretty much the only one who cares let's get to November's I can't afford it winner.

So I was,browsing the classifieds again not looking for a person selling their car when I came across this add.

I thought that was interesting. Alot of money to be asking for car repairs. I mean you can buy a decent car for that price. So it peaked my interest. What kind of car repair needs 3 grand??

For some reason in the car buying world you have certain people who buy certain cars BECAUSE it fits their personality (whatever) take a person who buys a smart car.

They may be concerned about the environment or be a tree hugging left wing nut job who believes they're going to stop global warming.

what about a big huge jacked up deisel

That would be your right winged gun loving nutcase who would put his elk antlers on his grill if that was legal. (Just an assumption don't get offended! P.s. I would love that truck)
When it comes to this guy...

And his fiat, well that brings a new breed of personality to the car buying world. To me a person owning a fiat flat yells out I'm different with almost a demand of respect. It says I've read and seen all the Harry Potter movies but could care less about star wars. It's a guy with nerdy glasses but not nerdly educated. A hair bunned big glasses librarian lady who becomes a man's sexy dream when the glasses come off and the hair comes down. The biggest thing is they are clueless when it comes to asking for help when their problem was totally unavoidable. Does this guy not have a clue of what he is asking for?

Ok ski passes? I thought he needed financial help?? Obviously only working 40 hours a week is exhausting and that 300 dollar car payment doesn't pay itself. And they need ski passes? Again this is another example of a clueless person not knowing what to do when a financial hiccup comes along which is really easy to fix. He still has a job so it's not like he's not making money.

Here is my suggestion. Get rid of the fiat asap. The automaker has only been reintroduced into the US markets since 2009. OF COURSE they're going to have problems. They don't have enough time to prove they're anything but a lemon. Your down 3 grand right? Try to
Sell yours for the max dollar you can. If you sell it and have less than 3 grand left on your loan your AHEAD. 2nd buy a car outright. For 3 grand you can buy a decent car with "heat" to keep you warm through the winter. Yes I know you don't have the money. I haven't written about  this yet on my "classes" but I have discovered a creative way to loan yourself. There's two options 1 find out all the available credit on your credit cards. As long as your not already forking out too much on high interest credit cards use those as a loan. How?? Well first of all absolutely no cash advances. They are not worth it instead because you are working put all of your expenses on those credit cards but make sure you take the amount you would of used out of your bank account in cash or transfer it to a savings account. Continue to do that over several weeks until you have an amount that you can use to buy a car outright. The 2nd option is to apply for a
Zero introductory interest cash back credit card. With this you'll have up to 12 months to pay off the balance. Again use my system of loaning yourself the money through using the card solely day to day purchases keeping track of every purchase and backing it up with cash or savings that you will use as your loan to fix this problem. IF all else fails there's always the option to surrender the vehicle. Yeah your credits destroyed but then for the next 7 years you can really learn how to become an independent person who can live without loans and have his stuff paid for. What's wrong with that??
Anyways I have rambled on way to long and since I don't know how to do a great close of this post I'll just end it with this.

There you have it your winner of the November I can't afford it award.
Next month we will have two winners December's and 2015 grand winner.

 which really doesn't mean anything.

Class 2 (using credit cards to get out of credit card debt)

I'm really struggling on how to teach this. I have a few ideas but unfortunately trying to write them down is difficult for me. If you have accidentally found my page because you researched something about credit cards whether it was grace periods questions about  interest or how to get out of debt quicker I'm going to tell you right now you might want to continue reading. I have found so many good uses for credit cards and new ideas are flowing in every day. Yes good uses. I have been to the bottom where there is no hope. Every tax return I get goes straight to credit cards because every year I go deeper in debt. Using this system which I accidentally found due to my wife accidentally canceling my debit card while ordering her a new one has created 3 credit cards with no interest. 2000 dollars a month will not have interest and I will save 40 dollars a month. 600 dollars of credit card debt has been paid off in only 2 months. There is no change in the way I live my life but I have more motivation to change my financial life. Are you ready to take a financial journey with me and start using everything you got to take your financial life back from your credit cards? Let's get started.

In a nutshell the way this works will be described by the next story.

Jake buys furniture on his credit card for 1200 dollars. After making a minimum payment for a year he pays 130 dollars principle and over 200 dollars interest. So after paying 330 dollars his loan is now 1070. After looking at his expenses he realizes has around 2000 dollars he spends every month. 1200 of that can be put on a credit card. It's the first of the month and he has till the 30th to make his next payment. Imediately he pays his credit card 300 dollars and his balance goes down to 770 dollars he then allows himself to use 300 dollars back on his credit card. He pays his phone bill groceries goes to the movies eats out and puts gas in his car. By his next paycheck  (weekly paycheck scenario) on the 8th his credit card is 1065 dollars he pays it 270 dollars adds that to the amount left over which is 5 (1070-1065=5) and he allows himself 280 dollars to put on his credit card. He pays some more bills buys groceries gets sick buys medicine and changes his oil. On the 15th he gets paid again. His cc balance is 1069 dollars. He pays his credit card 250 dollars then again pays his bills again. (Use your own imagination on what he buys)  The next week the 23rd he makes his last payment of the month of 250 dollars he allows himself to use 220 dollars because his normal credit card payment of 30 dollars is coming up so he deducts that from his allowed amount. At the end of the billing cycle Jake has paid to his credit card 1070 dollars he has used his credit card for all of his expenses spent 1040 dollars. His interest is zero. How? He paid his credit card balance in full by the due date. Even though it was in 4 payments. He also earns a 1 % cash back rewards of 10 dollars which he uses for account credit. So instead of paying 30 dollars and having 20 dollars eaten up in interest where his balance would be 1060 dollars he pays the exact same 30 dollars in a different way pays no interest and gets 10 dollars account credit making his new balance 1030 dollars. This works. Don't use your debit card for expenses your credit card can pay for.
Let's continue.
You need to know some things before you get started.
1 You need to know your credit cards due date. Most likely this is a duh answer but take a person who has it set up on auto payments they may not know. This is important to know.

2 You need to know your billing cycle beginning date and your ending date. Sometimes this can be hard to find. It's on the statement. Starts with a few days after your due date and ends usually one day before. For example a beginning date of sept. 20 usually ends on oct. 19th. This is important because after you complete a credit card cycle you don't want to start it over until the beginning of the cycle or else it will not be as effective.

(Billing cycle example)

3 find all expenses that can be put on a credit card. Write on a piece of paper what expenses can an cannot be put on credit cards. Go through your last statements and find how much you've spent and what of those expenses could of been put on a credit card.

4. Write EVERYTHING DOWN!! This by far is my most important rule.  You need to write everything down. Everything needs to be tracked so you know exactly where you are. At first I used a pen paper and envelope. That became annoying so I'm so glad xcel has finally produced a free smart phone version.

Unlimited access to your card will help. Smart phone laptop even a phone can have some access to your account.

In the next segment I will talk more on opening and closing statement dates as well as interest and cash back. I've decided to keep these short on certain points because I'm finding it hard to focus on it as an entire subject for just a few blogs. There's many parts to it and if I don't go in depth on every part I may not get to important keys of how to make this successful. More to come.

October's "I Can't Afford It Award" and deleting an old post.

Starting with the runner up, The October's "I Can't afford it award" 2nd place goes to the owner of this jeep.

It's funny to me how a person has to go through with a purchase to learn he or she can't afford it. He or she can't sit down with a pad of paper go through some scenarios and actually figure out if they can or cannot make a large purchase and unfortunately with so many preditory lenders and even family members blinded by in debt artificial sucess so many of us don't have a person telling them the cons of financing and pros on having your stuff paid for. Which is exactly a scenario that quite possibly happened to this person.

The winner of October's "I Can't Afford It Award" is not a car owner. Nope and if you haven't guessed by now it's this individual.

Again for privacy concerns I'm not showing the whole picture.

Look I understand we all have our struggles and our trials. Some we bring upon ourselves and others just happen. The problem with this persons argument is the check engine light was on as early as 2010. The problem still persisted through 5 more years and even after taking a trip to Florida and to Baltimore and to Australia in just this year alone, he still has the nerve to ask for help?? You cancel your trips and you put your life on hold to take care of the problem. Instead my assumption is he caved to the phrase "we deserve this" whenever a vacation or purchase opportunity came around then kicked the can down the road. (Oh how many times I've wanted to do that)

I also wanted to add a small segment on deleting a post that I explained in a prior post just written. This is for all the good that's been happening in my life. For the 2 good Christmases in a row. For my mortgage payment being on time for the 2 week vacation this summer for the father's day camping trip a stronger relationship with my wife and a new baby on the way. I even have a plan and funds to pay for the hospital. Things are looking up and I hope they continue to improve so that I can one day write my final post and delete my entire blog.

This is the post I've chosen and even though while writing this a few set backs have happened I know I can justify so much progress to do this. Again this is me keeping my end of the bargain with karma luck and the universe. (Nutcase alert) I know it sounds weird which is another reason to not keep this blog around. I hope to do more of this in the future eventually erase my entire blog when it's purpose is fulfilled.

Yes, another rant

Here I am again being mr negative. Without making excuses I want to share just two rants I found from Facebook.
I have mentioned before that I have a Facebook friend who I have wondered if they have used social services to fund their first and even their second pregnancy. It's pretty obvious when both of them do not come from wealthy families and one is working part time to assume that they would take advantage of social services up at BYU IDAHO. I still argue that if they truly needed to pay for their medical bills one or both would postpone college and get a full time job but yet the responsibility shoe only fits certain people. Again I'm not positive but it's obvious that the freedom to move back home from their first job out of college may point to several social programs used during their stay up at BYU IDAHO. So when I saw this last week/month I was amused and a irritated at the same time.

I am a believer in Karma and luck but I don't believe this is karma related more in the bad luck catigorie. Although I would like to blame it on karma for abusing the welfare system will cost you in the end I doubt it. What this does prove is that yes, contrary to some believe you can pay for your own pregnancies even if it's later in life. Although the government propably won't change its program rules may I at least make a couple of suggestions . One take a deeper look at both parents incomes of the couple who is applying for medicaid. I showed you one example earlier where a couple were using social services and getting free housing were also getting to go to Alaska California and Disneyworld  on the Parents dime. Parents can't step up to the plate? 2. Vehicles should be considered as an asset. Yes their unfortunately have been couples driving up to the hostpital in brand new vehicles that are not considered assets on the application. And 3. A payback plan. A person going to college is getting a degree to uhm I don't know make money. The government can't at least charge them a deductible amount for major surgeries or medical procedures such as births. I think 6 grand is a good number. Give them an amount of time to finish school and then take it out of their taxes. It's simple and it's right.
My other rant is on this.

Ok realy? I think it's funny how there levels of trials from small to much larger. Oh my gosh she's learned a few things while she's waiting for a NEW house. She's learned how to be grateful for the little things while a friend let them stay with them. Wow instead of writing an article on how you've taken a situation where you know your getting a BRAND  NEW house you possably have a working new car outside and you know things are going to get better. How about this, try waking up on a deflated mattress leaving for work sick because no one can take your place. Try working till midnight that night putting everything you own into a storage unit try doing all over again the next day which happens to be the last day of the month the day you have to be out of your place so after work having no time you put everything else you own under the  carport hand in your keys spend the next hour leaving your wife and 2 young kids in a car then using a geo metro to transport the rest of your belongings sacrificing a t.v. stand because it doesn't fit and become homeless with a plan in mind but nowhere to go just so you can achieve the American dream. Thats exactly what happened to me. I just have to laugh at these articles sometimes I don't feel like they truly know what true sacrificing is. When you don't have a place don't have church or parental support and your friends have abandoned you then write an article on that.
And that's my weekly rant.

Class #1 introduction.

I was like most Americans. Yes I admit it I lived paycheck to paycheck paying my bills and putting just a little excess on my credit cards. "I'll pay it back"  I would say. "It's only a few dollars." Over time a few dollars dollars grew to a hundred then 200 then 500 then 1000 until one day in the fall of 2013 after successfully maxing out 7 of my 8 credit cards I was in trouble. For the first time I went 30 days past my due date on my home loan. We could not pay the minimum on our largest credit card. We were barely skimping by. At 18000 dollars credit card plus 4000 car loan and a few thousand in medical, I was ready to throw in the towel. I was ready to claim bankruptcy and I was researching on how to do that. Thankfully and unthankfully HUD rescued me. It came with a price. Although they did reduce my mortgage payment the program destroyed my credit. My credit rating went from 750 to 550 in a matter of months. Desperation set in the next year when my cars transmission went out. I fought hard to work and fix my car. We tried twice to get a loan. Once we almost succeeded. Finally the banks said no and my family and I were on our own.

Fast forward a year my cars fixed our income is up my credit cards are down and I haven't been saying the phrase we can't afford that so much anymore. We still have a few financial set backs but have been able to stay ahead by watching our spending habits and putting off bigger purchases until we can afford them.

A couple months ago as I was reviewing my family's national debt  (what I call the all the debts we owe) I noticed that since I wrote about it back in the spring we had only paid off around 400 dollars. After all the mortgage payments the credit card payments all the dr payments the 401k and the car payments we had only paid 400 dollars!? Now my wife is pregnant and is the blame of a big portion of that plus my dr bills from my surgery have been surfacing but still only 400 dollars after all that work? This is when I started wondering how I could make a bigger punch to my national debt how can I Pay off my credit cards faster. Is it possible to pay just Princable and no interest? As I thought about this I remember a time back in 2014 after my injury we left to Arizona. We had to keep careful eye on our finances and I realized that at times we had enough to pay off our entire balance so I would. By doing that I wouldn't pay interest and my 300 dollar payment would turn into 500 credit dollars. I thought at the time as long as I did that every month I wouldn't be paying interest and my credit card would slowly pay itself off. I was wrong it only lasted 2 months and I was farther in debt back to paying the minimum payment. As I thought about that I wondered what went wrong. I stayed up late drenched in thoughts of how can I Pay off my credit cards faster how can I stop paying interest and make my payments more powerful in knocking out a few credit cards. I have finally been able to at least figure a few solutions and in doing so have paid off one credit card and just over 600 dollars on credit card debt saving around 60 dollars in interest in just under 2 months. 3 of my credit cards during this time have stopped charging me interest and in about 2 months I am projecting that I will have another credit card paid off and another one with no interest. I have been able to start my debt snowball at nearly it's full strength knocking out just over 300 dollars at one credit card per month. That is what I am going to try to teach. I get nothing in return for this just the satisfaction of passing on some valuable information to those who could use it and being able to pay themselves and not the finance companies is satisfaction enough for me.

Preface on what's going on

I'm putting a little preface of what is about to come. I have been writing alot lately and have a few blogs ready to go. First of all I have an announcement. As none of you know (since I realy don't have any followers) my main purpose of this blog is to write my feelings ideas frustrations down until a time where A. 7 events happen one being a honeymoon and 2 being debt free or B. as of right now an unknown reason I will erase my blog. At that time it will have served it's purpose and I can move on to another chapter in my life. To show myself karma and the universe my dedication to my end of the bargain I am going to review my blog and erase 1 blog post. Yeah it's not much but to me it shows progress is bring made and if it continues my end of the deal will continue.
Two other things. I have a winner for the "I can't afford it award" I've started my classes on credit card no interest payment plan and I still have a few rants to get out of the way so without saying anything further the next few blogs are going to go in such order
1st. Class # 1 on credit card no interest payment plan.
2. My rant on two facebook posts
3. My winner of the I can't afford it award
4. Class #2 on credit card no interest payment plan.
Coming very soon. Have a great Monday and the rest of the week.

Financial integrity within yourself.

More proof of the wealthier than you and me person going above and beyond his needs is asking for a hand out. I've warned about this over and over that a family needs to look at their budget look at their expenses and gosh danget look at what your future looks like. Build a financial foundation with wealth food storage and knowledge so that when storms of financial distress comes your way you will not only withstand it you will live comfortably with it.

I always had this fantasy of being stuck in bad weather with a girl of my dreams. Usually it involved a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. We would wait out the storm by a fireplace with nowhere to go. Finances are like that fantasy . Are you going to be the person who looked ahead built a comfortable sturdy cabin complete with furniture and a fireplace? Or are you measly going to get by with a tent. Yeah it's better than the last option of building a shelter but it's not as good as the first option. Just an FYI my fantasy sort of came true in 2006. My girlfriend who is now my wife and I got stuck in a town in arizona during a freak snowstorm.  They shut down all the roads and we were forced to find a hotel.

So I was again browsing the charity classifieds going through horses cats and dogs not having enough food or needing surgery when I came across this.

Who wasn't a victim of preditory lending? Both my father in law and sister in law lost their house and credit in the housing crises. My brother was forced to move out and rent his house. He was able to save it but then again I have to brag about my family how brilliant they are to weather storms and save their credit and house. So if he is so desperate for a hand out obviously he has been sacrificing for a while trying to clean up his financial problems right?
Uhm wrong
Just a month ago he was fishing in Florida

(I need a better editing app)


3 months ago he was at a ball game in Baltimore Maryland

(Could of been work related?)

And how many of you have wanted to go to Australia? Well you can ask this guy because 4 months ago in June he was there.

This is exactly the example that inspired me to write this blog. I have been taught to donate and feed the poor only to find out these people our over drafting fast offering accounts using food banks and church services to stay in their luxurious 350 thousand dollar homes.

I'm the one who was poor the entire time. The food I needed and donated went to people like him. There is no reason he could of said no to anyone of those trips yet here he is. My prime example of the person who buys the nice house cars toys and goes on nice vacations is asking for your money to save his house.
I just looked up this persons Facebook account and during the time I have written this which is about half a week he has since gotten a gofundme account set up and has posted it to his facebook page. Look, I don't have a problem with legit gofundme asking for help but this again is a problem that could of been fixed years ago. The warning signs were yesterday but procrastinated until today.

(Facebook post)

(Facebook comment)

I understand that he probably us the nicest and honest person but in this situation he hasn't been honest with himself or his family. This is a problem he has admitted he has known about for years. To be truly honest with himself would be to know when to say "we can't afford this". We all have those moments where we say we deserve something such as a vacatiion. I know i have. I deserve a honeymoon I've never had one but to just go on an a expensive trip knowing that problems are looming would be dishonest. Ignoring and kicking the can down the road until it's too late is being dishonest with yourself. What kind of father would you be if you chose to go on a trip knowing a problem was looming that could possibly end with you losing your house? The kind who eventually plays the charity card and asks for help.

Look at your debts look at your interest and start saving today wherever you can. Save as much as you can and live within and below your means. Build your financial foundation stronger. Say no to bigger purchases that get in the way of paying off debt.

Again if you haven't read this blog this is my spot to write my frustrations down. It's nothing personal just my ideas frustrations and helpful tips for sucess.