Wednesday, April 30, 2008

My new official coffee

Last month I signed up to be a part of the Joffrey's Coffee and Tea blogger beta test of their new Jamaican Me Crazy flavored coffee. I got my free coffee sample in the mail and let me tell you - it was AWESOME! I usually drink the Millstone Caramel Truffle coffee. I love it. And when I go to Tim Horton's I get the Buttery Caramel coffee. Well, this Joffrey's Coffee blows them outta the water! It is so freaking good!

The only bad thing about it is the price. It is not as cheap as my Millstone but man - this is what pampering is all about. If you like coffee then you need to give some Joffrey's Coffee a try! I wish they had a store near me so I could get some whenever I wanted!




If you want to give some Joffrey's coffee a try, click on my affiliate link below. It is now the official coffee of this blog. And at least check out their site as they have some really cool info on coffee roasting and the whole process and whatnot. Pretty interesting.

Joffreys Coffee & Tea Company

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Can I sell my debt on eBay too?

Apparently some family in PA was trying to sell their debt on eBay. Currently there are 46 minutes left and there is a bid of $1.00. (auction link) And the amount of the debt is $103,245.11.

So, if that $1.00 is what they get, will they even come out ahead? It cost them to list it on eBay. And if they get the money by PayPal then they will take a cut.

Of course, the whole thing is pretty ridiculous. This does not look to be the best debt reduction plan. Interesting choice, yes.

I have to wonder though- did they really think that someone would just come and pay everything off for them? Are they high?

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Electric bill woes

Not all that long ago we moved from a rather large 2 bedroom townhouse apartment to a smaller two bedroom apartment that is not a townhouse. In the old apartment the space around the front door was amazing. When it rained, if it was blowing rain, it ended up in the living room. So I can only imagine how much less our electric bill would have been if the place had been made a bit better.

So, when we moved I was looking forward to a lower electric bill.

Ha!

It has been $99 and some change each month. And for the life of me I do not know why!

After getting about tired of that I spent the last month doing as much as possible to use as little electricty as possible. I unplug things when they are not in use. I try to use natural lighting so that I do not need to use a lamp. I try to use the heat & A/C as little as possible. I was doing some extreme electricity saving.

So, I got my new electric bill in the mail yesterday.

Want to know my savings?

Less than $9! Can you believe that?! I do not know what is going on here. And we cannot possibly use any less electricity than we already are. It is so frustrating.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Three random things...

I got tagged!

Messy at My Crazy Debt tagged me for the Three Random Things meme. So that means 3 totally random things about me.

1. I have a metal plate in my face over my right cheekbone thanks to an incident involving an 11-yr-old me, a bicycle and a tree. Enough said.

2. I have an unhealthy addiction to making spreadsheets. :)

3. In high school, I used to hustle all the boys in my class in poker games. Muah haha. (too bad I didn't save that money)

Now, I am apparently supposed to tag 5 people. But I know this one has been going around a while. So, tag yourself! And then lemme know so I can read it :)

Friday, April 18, 2008

Tired of paying off debt - how to stay motivated?

I have been paying off debt like crazy these past few months. And I have seen some great progress in doing that. But you know what?

I am so freaking tired of paying off debt!

I mean, seeing the thousands of dollars I have been paying towards debt is just painful. There are so many other things that could have been done with that money. Instead, I grew up financially illiterate and am having to pay the price now.

It is really too bad that time machines are just a thing of science fiction. One would really come in handy about now.

It is hard to stay motivated to pay off the debt though. And maybe it just feels that way right now because it all is all nice and warm outside. And that makes me want to travel and what not. But of course, travel is expensive and that money is better used to pay down debts. It is just hard to tell yourself that you can do all of that once the debt is paid off.

So with that comes the task of trying to find things to do for entertainment that are not costly. This weekend we went to the movies because I had some free passes. That was fun.

Except that we decided to have lunch out, which was $21. That might not seem like much money, until you read my previous post on how I got a cart full of groceries for around $12.00 total. And the sad part is that the meal was not all that great.

And with the price of gas these days, it is not even a good idea to take drives to public parks and whatnot.

Then there are moments of weakness. You spend a little. Then after the fact you feel both guilt and regret. And that sucks.

So, how do you work through the lack of motivation once you get tired of sending every dime to credit card companies, student loans and car loans?

Super Double Coupons at Kroger

I went to my local Kroger grocery store yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see it was Super Double Coupon week.

That means that all coupons up to $1.00 are doubled! Woo hoo!

I needed sandwich baggies and they had coupons in the aisle for $1.00 off one box! So I got the cheapest box available for $0.69!

I ended up with a while cartful of groceries for like $12. It was awesome.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Credit card pains

I used my paid off credit card for lunch out over the weekend. I did that because I had been reading horror stories about people using their debit cards and having a lot of crazy charges show up. And it is no secret that it is easier to get back fraudulent charges with a credit card.

So, we get home and I log onto my credit card website. I want to make a payment in the amount that I spent.

But get this. It won't let me! It said my balance was zero so I could not make the payment! How about that? Craziness.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Food problems around the world

A couple of nights ago I caught something on the news about riots occurring in some countries due to either a lack of food or not being able to afford food.

Well, today I came across two different news stories on this. Apparently the riots are for both of the reasons above, but primarily are due to the cost of food.

An article on AOL states that food costs in the US are rising at the fastest in 17 years. That means that in the US food inflation is at its worst point in 17 years. Wow. That sucks. Apparently restaurants are feeling the pain and are raising prices. Applebee's was mentioned as having raised their prices by 3 percent.

Wow, that really makes me glad that I have not been to a restaurant since mid-February. Apparently, I am saving more than I realized.

In thinking about the food problems, I had chalked it up at first to things like corn costing more because of ethanol production. Well, according to this article that is partly to blame but we are also shipping off a lot of that corn since the value of the dollar is so low and other countries can buy our corn for cheap.

The article I found on Yahoo focused more on food riots in places like Haiti and Egypt. I found it shocking that world food prices have risen by an amazing 80 percent over the past 3 years.

Reading all of this sure makes me wish that I lived in a house instead of an apartment so that I could have a garden. Growing your own food has got to be way cheaper.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

mmm, free coffee

If you remember, I posted a while back about a beta taste testing program with Joffrey's coffee. The beta tasting program was aimed at bloggers. So, being a coffee drinker, I signed up for the program.

I got selected! And I got free coffee in the mail! So, I will be posting soon about my free coffee experience.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Honest thoughts on credit monitoring service

I have a car that I plan on getting rid of in the next few months. I will more than likely be trading it in for something else. With that in mind I wanted to have a look at my credit report and what not and see what my credit score is. Since I am paying off debt pretty regularly, I also wanted to make sure that was reflected and just see how it affected the credit score.

I signed up with TrueCredit.com last month for a 3-bureau monitoring service for $15 a month. You can refresh your credit report and credit score every day if you want with this service. I have refreshed it a few times - but not every day!

I found something that is wrong on there that I am working on correcting. I am also keeping track of the credit scores. It is crazy how they jump when something gets paid off. I had a 20 point jump with two of the credit bureaus when a card with a $500 limit and a $405 balance was paid off!

TrueCredit.com is the only service I have ever used, but I like it. It is pretty easy, although it did take me a few days to discover how to refresh the credit report and score.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Self-employment taxes

After doing my taxes I learned something interest. Doing side independent work for extra cash is considered self-employment income. That means quarterly self-employment taxes.

Luckily, I did not get penalized for it this tax year as I was working a real job too and I guess it all even out in the end. But now I have to think about the next tax year.

Basically, I need to see if I need to be paying in quarterly taxes. And the first due date is April 15th. Or I wonder if you can work around that by uping your withholding and having extra taxes taken out.

Do the whole side business for yourself thing is kind of a lot of work in the details, eh?

Friday, April 4, 2008

Debt roundup #14

March turned out to be a pretty decent month for debt paydown. I had planned on opening an IRA for each of us and thought that I would not put much towards debt payments. Instead I opened one IRA and paid the rest on debt. And I plan on opening the other IRA before April 15th.

As of 3/31/08, here was where I was at:
  • Car loan = $11,756.68 (last month was $12,014.03 )
  • Credit cards = $18,998.90 (last month was $22,187.75)
  • School loans = $155,444.93 (last month was $155,444.93)
Student loan balance did not change as they are in deferment and no interest was added this month. Of course, just yesterday I got some stuff from Sallie Mae about accrued interest that is set to be added to those loans. Argh.

Note the excitement though of getting the credit cards not only below $20,000 but even below $19,000!!! Woo hoo!

That balance is for only 3 credit cards. One has a balance of $599, one has a balance of $1440 and one has a balance of $16, 791. Luckily, the highest balance card is also the lowest interest rate!

In fact, it's interest rate is even lower than the car loan. So that means, that the plan is paying off the two smaller balance cards and then moving on to the car loan.

Also on the agenda this month is another IRA to be opened.

Credit card #3 - almost there

Well, at the end of March I paid off credit card #3. Today my new statement hit. I now have a $4.75 finance charge to pay off. And that is it! I have already scheduled that for today. So by tomorrow it should read zero balance! Hooray!

And I think I get my new statement for credit card #4 on Saturday. Then I will get to see how much that finance charge is.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

More cards paid off

With the end of the month I had a little more money than I thought.

So, guess what I did with it?

I sent it to two credit cards! Now I am just waiting on statements to run to see if there will be a finance charge or if there really is a zero balance.

Ah, so exciting. Can't wait for that 'stimulus check' in May. It will go towards debt too!