Mighty Bargain Hunter

Carnival of Debt Reduction time!

Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction! I’m very pleased that more of the submissions are on-topic. This is a very good thing, and I know it will benefit everyone concerned, from readers to submitters to hosts, to have a more on-target carnival each week.

Here are this week’s debt reduction posts, with the personal debt reduction stories up top:

• The Good Life on a Budget has paid off a car loan eight months early! Congrats!
• Man vs. Debt has a post from a reader on how they paid off their $15,000 debt by selling their stuff on eBay.
• Digerati Life has a post from a guest contributor that reduced debt with a loan modification.
• Reduce Debt Faster outlines three good ways to lower your credit card payments.  (Hint:  It never hurts to ask!)
• PT Money has an interesting question from a reader with a bit of debt problem that isn’t really her own overspending.
• Damon Day shares a sad story of a woman hit with a debt settlement nightmare.
• Christian Personal Finance gives four ways on how to pay off your mortgage early.
• Bargaineering has a post from Kyle from Suburban Dollar on telling the difference between first- and third-party debt collectors.
• Cash Money Life suggests this question as a wake-up call:  “Do you know how much interest you are paying each month?”
• Clear Choice Credit Cards posts a debt elimination guide.
• Your Money Relationship stirs up the good debt vs. bad debt question, with an anecdote on student loan debt.
• Eliminate the Muda has an interesting take on debt consolidation.

Again, thanks everyone for the on-topic posts.

One last thing:  If you’ve got debt questions, head over to Cash Commons and ask them!  They can even be as specific as this one.

Have a great week!

Posted in Carnivals, Debt Reduction | 5 Comments »

Friday Fiscals: Oof-tah!

Here are some posts of interest from my feed reader:

• Generation X Finance shows how to get your cheap books and movies.
• Free Money Finance tells us what not to aspire to:  being at the bottom of the financial barrel.
• Wise Bread hones the fine art of haggling for a great deal on a used car.
• The Simple Dollar discusses stress and overspending.
• Get Rich Slowly alerts us to the pitfalls of buying in bulk.

And a special thank you to”Dr. Dean” The Millionaire Nurse for participating over at Cash Commons!

Posted in Roundups | 1 Comment »

Review of Phil Villarreal’s Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel

I requested a review copy of Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel, and the first time the book was sent out, somehow it got lost in the mail.  The publicist contacted me to ask if I was going to review it, and I said that I never remembered seeing it.

They sent me another copy, and looking back, I really wish that I hadn’t responded to that e-mail.

Many of the tips in this book will quickly and efficiently alienate you from your family, your friends, your colleagues, and the businesses you patronize.  Try these tips once, or at most twice, and they will tell you about it, or they may just not want you around anymore.  Try these tips with the wrong person on watch, and you could get fired, or land in jail.

Mr. Villarreal issues this warning in the front of the book:

Honor.  Integrity.  Honesty.  Dignity.  If you live by any of these values, you may as well drop the book right now, because they’re against everything it professes.

Oh boy, is this ever true.  I should have put the book down right there, but I didn’t.  One word that should have been added to that list of nouns is decorum. It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything, or talked with anybody, with as vulgar and self-indulgent a speech pattern, and with such disregard for polite topics of conversation.  (There are only a few people that have permission to talk to me about my wife’s privates, and Mr. Villarreal isn’t among them.)

There are plenty of ways to save money without lying and stealing, but he wastes far too many pages describing these bad ways:

• Saying it’s your birthday (when it isn’t) in order to get free food at a restaurant
• Manufacturing fake price matches for grocery store items
• Taking the five-finger discount with office supplies from work
• Catching a double feature by sneaking into the second movie on the first ticket
• Taking money off the bar that was clearly left for the bartender
• Complaining about a meal when there’s nothing really wrong, just to get reimbursed
• Faking homelessness

And these aren’t lying or stealing but they will make you a problem child very quickly:

• Being just plain cheap with friends on road trips, gift exchanges, potlucks, and splitting the check
• Taking several of every food service supply that isn’t nailed down in a fast-food restaurant
• Actively avoiding tipping of any kind
• Being a repeat problem customer to get free services
• Abusing trial subscriptions and return policies

There were some good tips in this book, but it isn’t worth slogging through pig manure to find a couple of quarters.

Get Wise Bread’s book instead. 100% scoundrel-free, guaranteed.

Posted in Book Reviews | 14 Comments »

Seniors lose $10,000? Huh?

I got suckered into reading this article on MSN from the title:

A $10,000 Social Security hit

There was a stock photo of two obviously very depressed seniors right next to that headline.  At first I thought, “Man, the other shoe dropped fast!” but the article revealed the context of the $10,000:  no cost-of-living adjustment for 2010.

Here’s the math on how “no adjustment for inflation next year” translates to “$10,000.”  The average monthly Social Security check is $1,161, according to the article.  The 3% cost-of-living adjustment they won’t get means $35 extra per month, from now on, that they won’t get.

Compound this $35 per month deficit at a 2% annual rate (a savings account-ish rate), for twenty years, and you arrive at a little over $10,000.

Yes, the headline “A $10,000 Social Security hit” is a lot more sensational than something that mentions cost of living.  I may have read through the headline had it been like that.  What the headline did do, though, is call to attention that this isn’t jut a loss for next year, but for every year after that.

One of my colleagues said that if given the choice between a raise and a bonus, you should always go for the raise.  Why?  Because the bonus is one-time, and the raise is ongoing.  The same is true in the other direction:  the $250 that President Obama would like to give to seniors in order to make things hurt less is one-time, but the lack of a raise is ongoing.  It’s compounding in reverse.

This lack of COLA increases the disparity between rising prices and benefits, and accentuates that inflation makes us poorer.  Benefits don’t need to be cut directly to reduce the real cost of the program.

The benefits just need to be held where they are to reduce the real cost.

Posted in Commentary | 3 Comments »