One of the biggest keys to being able to eliminate debt is to figure out how much money you have coming in and going out. Its one of the most tedious parts of the process, but is very important if you are serious about trying to get out of debt. Working online with my check book has made a difference for me in keeping track of where my money is going / coming from. There are several good reasons to do this. The obvious reason being so that you don't overdraft your account and therefore have to pay extra ($35 - $50) NSF (No Sufficient Funds) charges. But also, its good for creating a budget further down the road. Lets you see what you bought, possibly finding things you don't really need to buy, or even some cases paying for something you should not be!
Before you begin, some notes about working with your bank information on your computer. First, get a good virus scanner!!! This is because there's plenty of viruses and trojans out there you don't want or need. These can cause several headaches down the road, so just eliminate the risk now. There's plenty of good FREE ones out there, so there's really no excuse to not have antivirus software. Also, try not to leave your account number and passwords in a readily available location. Especially if your a college kid who doesn't want roommates trying to access your accounts. If you absolutely have to have them, because you forget them all the time, then its good to have a password on your PC to login before you get to the desktop.
These are tools that I used, and the purpose for the tool, later on we can discuss how to use these tools to help get started on the right track.
Money Managing Software. The most common products are Microsoft Money and Quicken. I personally use Microsoft Money, but my opinion isn't valid because I'm still using the 2003 version. There is a free product called Mint, which is made by the people who make Quicken, that has gotten favorable reviews that may interest some people as well. I've tried it and I do like it, but it does require your bank to be online, and it will download statements from the bank for you. I probably would be more inclined to use it if
Bank Statements. You need these to compare what you think you have vs. what the bank has. If they do not match, chances are there is an error. And chances are, the error is in your checkbook. Not that the bank is perfect, but the odds are slightly in their favor.
Checkbook. This is for comparisons sake, because most of the time people use the checkbook to see how much money is left. It may be accurate, but it may not be. And when your working on trying to get out of the debt hole, almost is not good enough.
Getting all these together, and making you checkbook accurate will go a long way towards helping you recover from money problems. You can't get to the finish line without getting to the starting line. Any questions at all don't hesitate to ask!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Introduction
Hello, and welcome to my blog about me. In this blog I'll be writing about what I am dealing with, and what I am doing to resolve these problems. Most of the items in this blog involve items about finances and health. What you won't find are political opinions, political views, or in general any slander to people.
Lets start with a little backstory for the first post. Recently (May 2009), I graduated from Northern Illinois University, with a bachelors degree in Computer Science. Life is good, got married to a beautiful wife, who I had been dating for 8 years, and was very fortunate to get a job straight out of college. However, the job was in Houston, TX and my wife and I had not ever even been to Texas. So there was the transition. And then came the problems...
When you graduate from college, unless your parents pay your way (mine did not, and I was better off for it!) or receive full scholarships (I only received a partial scholarship for my junior year at NIU), then you will have the joy of student loans. Followed with the joys of said student loans no longer being deferred. And by the end of my time in college I had accrued $44,000 in student loan debt (Keep in mind, $11,000 of which came from UNCC when I went there for a semestar, and $7,000 for a year at DeVry University). By itself, this is a problem for many of us, but it didn't stop there...
When we moved to Texas, we owned a house in Chicago. And, as everyone remembers the housing market went ker-pow! So seeing as how the house was not going to be sold, we decided to keep the house for the short term, and get an apartment in Houston. The problem being obviously is that there are now two housing payments to make a month instead of one. So we are making $2,000 a month payments in housing as a result and obviously needed to find a renter. Thankfully we did but with the person renting being family, and money issues of his own, we let him rent the place for a discount. Any bit helps, but as you see, you eventually run out of money to allocate.
Next on the agenda, was the wedding we had. We had planned the wedding pretty far in advance, including the thought that we would still be in Illinois at the time of the wedding and NOT in Texas. Unfortunately, with the move required my wife to make several trips to Chicago to coordinate the wedding (we did not hire a coordinator, we tried to save money and do it our selves. My wife wanted to be a Wedding Coordinator when this started, by the time it ended, she decided she was going to do something else :-)). I did not have the cash for this, so I had to use credit cards to make the payments for the wedding. Add into the fact that my wife had credit card debt of her own, we started off our marriage with approximately $19,000 in credit card debt. Disgusting I say!
And finally, moving to Houston is definitely fun. However, we don't know too many people, and we are anti-social by nature. As a result, we tend to stay in the house a lot. Combine this with my job being a desk job, without much movement, you have a recipe for becoming a fatty. Which I succeeded to do, by gaining probably close to 70 lbs in the past few years (going back to when I went back to NIU in 2007). Naturally some health problems came into effect, including hernia surgery in June 2009, and being diagnosed with slightly high blood pressure. Knowing owing lots of money + stress = High Blood Pressure, I knew something needed to change.
Thus this blog. Part of its purpose is for me to keep a journal of what I am doing to try to fix my problems and keep myself on the right path. The other reason is for other people in similar situations (either money problems or weight issues) can see what I am doing as another option for them to try. I am not saying I am a guru by any stretch of the imagination. But I like to try things and see how they go. If it helps one person, then obviously the blog has served its purpose. So hope you enjoy, and if you have any questions or comments definitely post them at any time. Thank you again for reading!
Lets start with a little backstory for the first post. Recently (May 2009), I graduated from Northern Illinois University, with a bachelors degree in Computer Science. Life is good, got married to a beautiful wife, who I had been dating for 8 years, and was very fortunate to get a job straight out of college. However, the job was in Houston, TX and my wife and I had not ever even been to Texas. So there was the transition. And then came the problems...
When you graduate from college, unless your parents pay your way (mine did not, and I was better off for it!) or receive full scholarships (I only received a partial scholarship for my junior year at NIU), then you will have the joy of student loans. Followed with the joys of said student loans no longer being deferred. And by the end of my time in college I had accrued $44,000 in student loan debt (Keep in mind, $11,000 of which came from UNCC when I went there for a semestar, and $7,000 for a year at DeVry University). By itself, this is a problem for many of us, but it didn't stop there...
When we moved to Texas, we owned a house in Chicago. And, as everyone remembers the housing market went ker-pow! So seeing as how the house was not going to be sold, we decided to keep the house for the short term, and get an apartment in Houston. The problem being obviously is that there are now two housing payments to make a month instead of one. So we are making $2,000 a month payments in housing as a result and obviously needed to find a renter. Thankfully we did but with the person renting being family, and money issues of his own, we let him rent the place for a discount. Any bit helps, but as you see, you eventually run out of money to allocate.
Next on the agenda, was the wedding we had. We had planned the wedding pretty far in advance, including the thought that we would still be in Illinois at the time of the wedding and NOT in Texas. Unfortunately, with the move required my wife to make several trips to Chicago to coordinate the wedding (we did not hire a coordinator, we tried to save money and do it our selves. My wife wanted to be a Wedding Coordinator when this started, by the time it ended, she decided she was going to do something else :-)). I did not have the cash for this, so I had to use credit cards to make the payments for the wedding. Add into the fact that my wife had credit card debt of her own, we started off our marriage with approximately $19,000 in credit card debt. Disgusting I say!
And finally, moving to Houston is definitely fun. However, we don't know too many people, and we are anti-social by nature. As a result, we tend to stay in the house a lot. Combine this with my job being a desk job, without much movement, you have a recipe for becoming a fatty. Which I succeeded to do, by gaining probably close to 70 lbs in the past few years (going back to when I went back to NIU in 2007). Naturally some health problems came into effect, including hernia surgery in June 2009, and being diagnosed with slightly high blood pressure. Knowing owing lots of money + stress = High Blood Pressure, I knew something needed to change.
Thus this blog. Part of its purpose is for me to keep a journal of what I am doing to try to fix my problems and keep myself on the right path. The other reason is for other people in similar situations (either money problems or weight issues) can see what I am doing as another option for them to try. I am not saying I am a guru by any stretch of the imagination. But I like to try things and see how they go. If it helps one person, then obviously the blog has served its purpose. So hope you enjoy, and if you have any questions or comments definitely post them at any time. Thank you again for reading!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)