Posts Tagged "how to make money"

Using Credit Cards and Paying Them Off Immediately…Too Dangerous?

Posted by jefferson on May 11, 2012 in Making Money, Saving Money | 39 comments

For anyone trying to escape the clutches of credit card debt,  the first thing that the experts will tell you is to immediately cut up your credit cards, and stop carrying them around with you.  That way you remove the temptation of getting a quick and dirty “loan” every time you have the urge to buy something.  You cannot spend money that you don’t have, if you don’t have the cards to enable that behavior.

When we started our current journey out of debt,  I didn’t cut up my credit cards– but I did put them in a drawer in my kitchen.  However, as I was recently looking for a way to save some money on life’s necessities, I decided to pull them out again.  The idea that I came up with was to go ahead and use credit cards, in order to take advantage of their rewards programs.  However, instead of waiting for the bill to show up to pay off the balance, I would pay off the expense AS SOON as I get home from the store.

Credit card companies are undoubtedly betting on the fact that I won’t actually do this.  I don’t blame them;  if I looked at my personal spending history– I would make that same bet.  They make their profits off of the sky-high interest charges that they charge folks who carry a balance month to month.  The percentage of money that they pay back to their cardholders in the form of rewards programs, is a pittance compared to what they are making in interest charges.

But my plan is to take advantage of these programs without paying anything in interest.  I am not getting any kickbacks or anything from this post, but wanted to share how I am using these cards to my advantage.  It kinda feels like I am working the system a bit, but one slip (where I can’t pay my bill in full), and I will give money right back.

Target Red Card:  Target offers 5% off of your purchase at any time, if you use the Target Red card.   This credit card carries a disgusting interest rate of well North of 20%,  which will wipe out that 5% savings very quickly if you carry a balance.  However, Target’s prices are already low, and stacking another 5% on top is definitely appealing.

We mainly use Target for our home supplies and baby supplies.  We stock up on paper towels, toiletries, bath products, etc.  Target sells these items for less than our local grocery store.  Also, they often have promotions on their baby supplies where you can get a $5 or $10 gift card if you purchase multiple items.  When you stack low prices, promotions,  coupons, and an additional 5% from using the Red Card– you can really save some dough.

Chase Freedom Card:  The interest rate on this fine fellow is also not exactly dressed to impress.  However, if you can stay on top of your bill, this card has one of the best rewards programs around.  They give you 1% back on purchases no matter what you buy.  These reward points can be used in their online store, or even better– can be traded in 1:1 for cash.

The best part about using this card is that each quarter, they offer a few spending categories where you can get 5% cash back instead of 1%.  Right now, their promotion is 5% back on all grocery purchases.  One of our big goals right now is to save money on groceries, so this one is huge for us.  As a result, throughout all of April, I put nearly all of our groceries on this card, and banked a nice little $30 bonus at the end of the month ($600 x .05).  I couldn’t use the card at Aldi of course, as they don’t accept credit cards.

In previous promotions, they have offered 5% back on restaurants (not all that useful to us) and gasoline (very useful to us!), but the current deal is our favorite.  As long as I continue paying off the charge as soon as I get home– this works out to a very sweet deal.

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The truth is that this plan to save 5% at Target and 5% on groceries is a little dangerous to someone who has had issues with credit card debt.  You have to be careful, as forgetting to pay off your balance a time or two can quickly lead to your balance growing to an amount higher than you can afford to pay.  As such, a big caveat to the plan is insisting that you only purchase items on your rewards cards *if* you have enough money in your checking account to cover them.  As for me, I have decided to take the risk in the name of saving some extra money each month.

How about you guys? Do you ever use rewards cards?
Do you pay off the balances as soon as you get home?

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If you are looking for a good rewards card, there are tons of great deals currently available.

You Should Quit Your Job! 5 Signs That It Is Time To Move On

Posted by jefferson on Apr 30, 2012 in Career Advice | 27 comments

The writing is plastered all over the wall.  This job is going nowhere fast, and you are starting to seriously question what kind of a future you will have your company.  Believe it or not, this happens to everyone at some point, and you will soon after find yourself wondering if it is time to start looking to see what else it out there.  Sometimes this happens because your position with a company is eliminated, but more often– people start looking because they are just wanting to address dissatisfaction with their current role.

According to research, the average person will have 7-10 jobs in their lifetime, and the median years that a person stays in a job is 4.1 years.  With this amount of turnover going on, you shouldn’t be surprised or upset if you find yourself getting the itch.  If you work in a large corporate environment like I do, you live in a world where there are constant re-shuffles and re-alignments.  Managers and employees alike, are cycled from team to team, and job functionality and responsibilities can shift like the weather.  This level of turnover can sometimes lead you to falling into a no-win situation.  Staying in a bad situation can actually be very detrimental to your career, as you don’t want to stay on a sinking ship.

Luckily, there are some warning signs that you can look for to know when it is time to move on.  If these sound familiar to you, you don’t necessarily need to leave your company– but you should probably at least consider trying to move to a different team:

1. You Are Not Getting Invited to Meetings

Being asked to participate in important discussions is an important indicator of how much your management values your opinion.  If you find yourself on the outside looking in, don’t be afraid to reach out to the meeting organizers to see if you can get included.  However, if this pattern continues and especially if your entire team seems to have this issue– I would be concerned.  If you are slowly slipping into irrelevance, you need to be taking steps to reverse that trend.

 2. You Don’t Have Anything to Do

If management refuses to give you any meaningful work, this can mean a variety of things.  Perhaps there are company changes on the horizon or maybe they are waiting on a big project to start.  However,  if you find yourself doing more browsing than working, day after day,  then I might start to get worried.  The truth is that in most corporate environments, there aren’t enough people or hours in the day to do everything.  I have often joked that I could work for 96 hours straight without stopping, and still not tackle everything “on my list”.  Companies these days like to run it lean and mean, so if you find yourself on a team where there is no work available,  it is a major warning flag.  If the company does decide to make cuts, the teams that contribute little to nothing will be first to go.

3.  Your Job Has Taken Over Your Entire Life

This is the opposite situation as the one just mentioned.  If your work responsibilities have consumed you entirely, and you don’t have any time left for yourself or your family,  please realize that this isn’t the norm– and you are being taken advantage of.  All employers know that they are under some obligation to provide you with a work-life balance.  You shouldn’t have to work every day and every night for long periods of time.  There may be situations, as deadlines approach, where everyone has to hunker down and put in extra hours to make sure that projects get completed.  But if this is the situation, week after week, month after month, then your employer is obviously understaffed and needs to being in some extra bodies to help alleviate the pressure.  You will burn out quickly, if your job takes over your life entirely.  You must tell yourself that other people, who probably make the same money as you at different companies, are not being put through the same ringer.  Don’t be afraid to branch out and see what else you can find, if your employer insists on running things like a sweatshop.

4. You Don’t Get Along With Your Boss

It is normal to have some resentment towards your manager, it kind of comes with the territory.  It is their job to tell you what to do, and you don’t like to be told what to do.  But for you to be successful at work, you are going to need to have a positive working relationship with them.  You can’t forget that when you work for a large multi-tiered company,  one of your top responsibilities is to make that manager look good and to give them success stories to talk about in their meetings.  If you have an unhealthy dislike for them– this is going to be difficult for you.  Bad managers can come in all shapes and sizes, and you will surely come across a few in your day who are clearly out of their league.  If your boss’s approach or decision making  is causing you fits, you should be able to express your concerns to them.  If they wont talk to you or won’t make changes to improve the situation, you have to be willing to walk away.  I know people that have a very passionate hatred for their bosses, and it seems to totally consume them.  Having that much hatred for anything is not healthy, and you shouldn’t subject yourself to that many negative emotions.  Complaining to your manager’s boss may be an option for you if the problems are well documented, but it may also backfire on you and make you look like a whiner.  The better approach may be to see if you can find a different team and thus a different manager.

5. You Don’t Get Along With Your Co-Workers

One of the most important factors in how satisfied people are with their jobs, is their relationship with their co-workers.  You don’t have to be BFFs with the guy in the next cubicle, but you need to have a healthy respect for them.  I have worked on many different teams over the years, and the dynamics can very wildly.  The best kind of team is one where everyone can work together and contribute ideas to the complex problems of the day.  However, if people on your team rarely talk to each other outside of meetings, and the dynamic is one of mistrust and suspicion, things can get dicey.  If you find that you have a damaged relationship with one or more of your co-workers, you should see if you can take some steps to improve the situation, knowing that it may not work with everyone.  I have been on teams where the fact that I was dedicated and hard-working seemed to cause some resentment from a few, but I didn’t dwell on them.  The problem comes if you have a tense relationship with most or all of those around you.  If this sounds like your situation,  it is probably time to locate the exit sign.

Debt Update – A New Goal for Debt Payoff

Posted by jefferson on Mar 31, 2012 in Eliminating Debt | 11 comments

We started this site to share our journey out of debt with the world, and to pass along our successes and failures along the way. This journey began with almost $22,000 worth of debt, and we have already made some great progress! Since today is the last day of March, it seems like a good time to go ahead and give an update on how we have been doing.

With yesterday’s paycheck and the corresponding bill-pays to go along with it, our debt is down under $14,000 for the first time! We were hoping to hit this threshold a bit earlier, but the timing of paychecks vs. bills due has been tricky the last few weeks.

Now the journey continues into April, when my raise from work will finally kick in. I got a decent raise this year (thanks to being proactive with my boss), which should definitely help in our debt reduction efforts. We also have a few unavoidable expenses coming up that will make April an interesting month all around. This makes it even more important that we control expenses, especially our grocery bill.

When we started See Debt Run, we set our original goal to become debt free by the end of the year 2012. After walking this path for 3 months, we realize that we need to scale that goal back just a tiny bit.  As such, we are now shooting for the end of February 2013.

GOALS:
End of March: 14000 **CURRENT**
End of April : 13500
End of May : 11500
End of June: 10500
End of July : 9500
End of August: 8400
End of September : 7300
End of October: 6200
End of November: 5100
End of December : 4100
End of January 2013 : 3000
End of February 2013: 0

Our bottom line is a much, much healthier than when we started this journey. When we started, our cash flow was in the red every single month. We have made a number of lifestyle changes that have helped to reverse that trend and as you can tell from the goals above– we are now cash flow positive and able to hack away at significant portions of the debt at each step along the way.

The goals above make the following assumptions:

1. We will use the majority of our income to pay off debt. Food and clothes purchases will be made as needed, but every attempt will be made to try to keep those costs down.
2. Home Improvement costs will be kept down until we are able to get out of debt. Our house has many needs, but we will “patch” things using cheap DIY until the debt payoff is complete.
3. We will snowball debt payments. As debts are paid off, the amount of money that used to go towards one creditor, will be applied towards the next. Thus allowing for larger payments as the year progresses.
4. We will come up with an extra $200-$250 of income each month via surveys, eBay auctions, craigslist, writing assignments, and whatever else comes along.
5. We will not take an expensive vacation this year. The beach is calling me, and calling me often. Instead we will plan to take a big blow-out vacation next year when we can afford to pay for it up front!
6. We will be able to pay extra in May 2012, as our paychecks and bills will finally fall in a favorable position.
7. We will finalize our debt payoff in February 2013 with our Tax Refund.

We will be hosting our first Carnival tomorrow, The Carnival of Financial Simplicity, so be sure to stop by to read some of the best articles from around the Finance World. In the meantime, See Debt Run was featured in a number of carnivals in the past week:

• Coffee Talk was featured in the Yakezie Carnival
• Habit Creep was featured in the Carnival of Money Pros
• The Art of DIY was featured in the Totally Money Carnival
• Why Have an Emergency Fund? was featured in the Carnival of Financial Simplicity
• I’m a Barbie Girl was featured in the Yakezie Carnival